In the face of all this unspeakable cruelty to Australian animals …

The Bader 111

The Barly Pearl

The Ocean Drover

Israel

Kuwait

Mauritus

Crammed on an aircraft

The Abbott government has said that it will roll back the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance Scheme (ESCAS), and it has already moved to axe the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy and any suggestion of an independent animal welfare auditor for the live export trade.

In just very recent weeks and months, Animals Australia, in 34 investigations, has been able to expose heinous breaches of the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance Scheme in most countries involved in this trade, the most recent being Jordan, Kuwait, and Lebanon, a country not even approved to receive Australian animals. In the face of all this unspeakable cruelty to Australian animals, Tony Abbott claims that this is a ‘good trade for Australia’. Millions of tortured animals would argue otherwise, and the advocates who speak out for them appear to be fighting a losing battle. How is it that this can happen, since the horrors of the Indonesian slaughterhouses reached into homes across Australia? Following those atrocities, the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance Scheme was implemented. After that, we saw the unspeakable butchery of 22,000 Australian sheep in Pakistan. All this happens because the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) does nothing to provide any disincentives for exporters to even pretend to comply with the terms and conditions of their licences. Why would they? They know that there hasn’t been, and won’t be, a penalty of any substance or meaning applied to them, and they are consistent repeat offenders. And the farmers who supply them don’t hold them to account, continuing to supply the animals in the full knowledge of what will happen to them – long, torturous sea journeys of up to six weeks, then a brutal death at the hands of street butchers in any number of the countries to which Australia ‘proudly’ sends its pitiful victims.

DAFF’s perennial excuse for its inaction is variously that the animals cannot be identified as Australian (usually because ear tags have been ripped out), or it cannot trace the animals, or the animals were exported prior to the implementation of ESCAS to the countries concerned. Any technicality will do, just so long as the exporters can continue their vile trade. You can read DAFF’s so-called ‘investigations’ here:

http://www.daff.gov.au/biosecurity/export/live-animals/livestock/compliance-and-investigations

Typically, DAFF takes 6-8 months to complete an investigation. Where it finds that it cannot prove that the animals shown in the evidence are Australian, it completely escapes them that the butchers in these countries have such minimal respect for the lives and the suffering of animals. Australian animals will generally be treated much like animals from other sources and DAFF clearly has no issue with that. Even Australia’s Chief Veterinarian, Mark Schipp, loudly supports the trade. Nor do the exporters and the farmers who supply them. A Save Live Exports Facebook page concentrates primarily on trying to shut down animal advocates, discrediting Animals Australia and Lyn White, and their claims that once they have sold the animals they have no responsibility for what happens to them. There is minimal expression of pity or compassion for their hapless animals. Sadly, because there is only one Lyn White, what we know is most likely just the ‘tip of the iceberg’.

Citations here are from the official Ban Live Exports site. And a warning, all the video links here contain distressing, graphic footage.

Kuwait

Animals Australia had been filing complaints with DAFF for 14 months about sheep being slaughtered at numerous locations outside the ESCAS regime, including at the specifically banned Al Rai marketplace. They said:

‘This very market was the scene of some of the most distressing and confronting cruelty that Animals Australia has ever documented. In 2010, our investigators gathered evidence of sheep being dragged, thrown, trussed and stuffed into car boots, tied onto roof racks and having their throats brutally cut – all while fully conscious’.

DAFF’s investigation into Kuwait from January 2013 is ‘not yet complete’.

‘Strict’ live export rules were meant to protect animals from this fate. All DAFF did was place extra conditions on the exporter’s licence, yet the atrocities have continued, and, since the investigation by DAFF Australian sheep have continued to be butchered across Kuwait outside the ESCAS system.

http://www.banliveexport.com/take_action/kuwait-sheep-sold-illegally/
Lebanon (from the Official Ban Live Exports site)

‘In June 2013 Animals Australia was documenting evidence of more ESCAS breaches in Jordan when it received information about the illegal on-selling of Australian sheep from Jordan to Lebanon — a country that is not even approved to import Australian animals.

Investigators immediately travelled to Beirut where investigators fund Australian sheep hidden away in a converted carpark.

The animals were being offered for private purchase and slaughter, in more absolute defiance of ESCAS, and Animals Australia immediately lodged a formal complaint and all of the evidence with the Department of Agriculture’.

Jordan

Last week, Lateline showed shocking brutality to Australian sheep, being butchered in 26 locations, including street markets in Jordan

http://www.banliveexport.com/features/sheep-suffer-in-street-slaughter.php

Israel

In June 2013, an Israeli animal advocacy organisation, Anonymous for Animal Rights filmed the unloading of two livestock vessels, the 37 year old Jordanian owned, operated by Livestock Shipping Services Bader III and Wellards’ Ocean Drover, formerly the Becrux. The evidence shows shocking treatment of Australian sheep, showing them being kicked, thrown and beaten off the two ships. This follows an earlier complaint about Israel slaughterhouses. Anonymous reported at the time (December 2012). ‘‘Through a co-operation between the Kolbotek crew and an Anonymous activist, the exposé depicted calves and lambs being led to slaughter by using extensive violence through beating, use of electric shockers and dragging by the animals’ hind legs and other body parts, at times with a forklift …’

It further reported: ‘Numerous articles mentioned that this had not been the first time for Tnuva to be caught red-handed. Only a year ago, Anonymous activists documented the unloading of calves brought by shipments from Australia to the Adom-Adom slaughterhouse. In this case, too, similar use of violence was exposed, including beatings and use of electric shockers for the purpose of hasting the descent of the calves from the transportation trucks’

Particularly brutal was the treatment of ‘downer’ animals (those who can no longer walk or stand), with one bull being violently prodded with an electric shock device in the face, eyes, anus and genitals. As he bellows in pain and fear, his tormentors persisted for over an hour to try and make him stand.

http://anonymous.org.il/tnuvacruelty

Egypt

In May 2013, DAFF received a complaint from Animals Australia after it received information from an Egyptian veterinarian, who filmed and documented Australian cattle having their leg tendons slashed, eyes stabbed, and desperate, terrified animals trying to escape with their heads almost hanging off. These abuses have been documented in Egypt in 2003, 2006, 2010, and again this year, yet Australia continued to send animals there. Following the 2006 exposure, then Prime Minister suspended the trade to Egypt briefly while a second memorandum of understanding was developed between the two countries. On the very first shipment back into Egypt on the Maysora, further abuses were documented, and then Minister McGauran requested an explanation from the Egyptian authorities, and so far as anyone knows none has ever been forthcoming. Nonetheless, Australia resumed shipping cattle there. In 2013, nothing has changed, the brutal tendon slashing and eye stabbing continued. At the time of this complaint, a number of Australian cattle was stranded in a feedlot there because they had hormone growth promotants in their ears, which was unacceptable to the Egyptians, whose solution was to be to cut their ears off before they were slaughtered, Their fate is unknown.

http://banliveexport.com/egypt

Mauritius

Finally, we get to last week’s hideous shocking abuse of Australian cattle in Mauritius. The complaint this time relates to horrific handling and slaughter in streets in Port Louis, where cattle were thrown hog-tied from trucks, and butchered, still tied. As in the footage of Jordan, children torment the already terrified, traumatised animals.

http://www.banliveexport.com/beyondwords

Last year, on October 5, a shipment of cattle was sent from Geraldton to Port Louis in Mauritius. A Broome veterinarian, David Morrell, who is a self-proclaimed cattle specialist with particular expertise in pregnancy testing, certified that they were not pregnant, or had been spayed ‘according to the regulations’. At least two gave birth on the ship, the Barkly Pearl, and a significant number of others was found to be pregnant upon arrival in Mauritius, where it is illegal to slaughter pregnant animals. Approximately another 60 were found dead in a feedlot, allegedly poisoned. The captain of the Marshall Islands registered Barkly Pearl reported to the Mauritian authorities that there had been no mortalities on the 14 day voyage when there had been at least 18. Australian authorities have done nothing about this because he did not lie to them. The Barkly Pearl continues to ply its trade from Australian ports. An independent veterinarian went to Port Louis and reported that the cattle were being slaughtered by ‘traditional roping methods’, banned under ESCAS, yet we now have another shipment of cattle subjected to the same or worse fate.

Kazakhstan

Two weeks ago, 49 cattle died in a 17 hour flight to Kazakhstan. These supposedly ‘valuable’ animals were crammed on two decks of a 747 aircraft, and these unfortunate animals died of suffocation from the ammonia fumes around them. The animals, according to ESCAS, are supposed to be checked during the flight, but weren’t. In the 17 hours, they received no feed or water either, despite a stop in Singapore en route. No harm done, said the exporter. Livestock Shipping Services (again), they were insured.

Other complaints filed with DAFF in relation to Malaysia and Vietnam in May and June respectively remain unresolved yet animals are still being sent to these, and all the other countries notwithstanding. DAFF has stated that it will not release the vision from Vietnam ‘in case children might see it;’ adding child welfare to its remit. A Freedom of Information request met with a bill for more than $3,100, with no guarantees that any meaningful information would actually be provided, and the information that it would take 18 months to receive anyway.

In the video footage from Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and Mauritius, children are clearly encouraged to further torment the traumatised animals, proving beyond doubt that the torture of animals is encouraged in these countries and begging the question o whether they breeding the psychopaths of the future..

So what can we do? The coalition government has always loudly proclaimed its support for this vile trade in wretched animal misery and suffering. How much is going on in these countries that we don’t know about? All we can do is constantly bombard politicians about the matter, which has Australia being seen as one of the most cruel countries in the world.

It brings a deep shame to the collective Australian conscience. We are writing to the governments and media in importing countries as well in the hope that one day, like the slave trade, this will be seen is one of the most cruel exploitation of innocent, helpless victims in human history.