Coalition support for cruel live sheep trade a retrograde step
Media Release: Australian Alliance for Animals
The Australian Alliance for Animals has today condemned the Coalition’s policy of reinstating the cruel live sheep export trade should it return to government.
The comments come as opposition leader Peter Dutton visits the Woolorama Show in Western Australia.
Alliance for Animals’ Policy Director Dr Jed Goodfellow said the Coalition’s position would harm animal welfare, export Aussie jobs overseas, and would be resoundingly rejected by the Australian community.
“This would be a retrograde step and would take Australian agriculture backwards.
“The Coalition seems intent on keeping Aussie farming in the dark ages when it comes to animal welfare.
“The last thing the Aussie wool industry wants is for its brand to be tarnished by the international stain that is live sheep exports,
“The Coalition need to see the writing on the wall – the Australian community and international markets want higher standards of animal welfare, and the live sheep trade is incompatible with this.
“Polling commissioned by the RSPCA in 2022 shows that 78% of Australians (including 79% of Western Australians) support a phase out of live sheep exports if farmers are assisted in the process.
“Reinstating the trade after an effective phase out would see Aussie jobs in local processing facilities and further value-adding opportunities exported back to the Middle East,
“Peter Dutton’s stance is ironic given it was the previous Coalition Government that commenced the phase out, with 70% of the trade declining since 2018 due to new regulations introduced under David Littleproud’s watch.
“Despite all of the regulatory reviews in recent years, sheep still suffer heat stress when traversing the equatorial and Middle Eastern climates, and they’re still slaughtered without stunning.
“The Albanese Government’s policy is simply picking up where the Coalition left off but it’s doing so in a way that provides the industry and the community with more certainty.
“Any attempt to continue this cruel trade will not be well received by the majority of Australians, and the level of concern just gets higher with every generation.”
About the Australian Alliance for Animals The Australian Alliance for Animals is a national charity leading a strategic alliance of Australia’s key animal protection organisations with a combined supporter base of over 2 million people. Core members include Animals Australia, Humane Society International Australia, World Animal Protection Australia, Compassion in World Farming, FOUR PAWS Australia, and Voiceless, the animal protection institute. Website: Australian Alliance for Animals.
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Gus
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Benjamin
Return to home pageThis sad coalition of ‘jobs for the boys’ should never be returned to power, ever!
The leftovers just do the opposite of Labor no matter what it is. They don’t have to believe it, just do the opposite because everything Labor do is bad
Don’t forget that as Home Affairs Minister, Dutton released a French au-pair from immigration detention and granted her a tourist visa after lobbying by AFL boss Gillon McLachlan, the second-cousin of Callum MacLachlan, the scion of one of the wealthiest pastoral families in Australia; the woman was planning to work for MacLachlan and his family. The Jumbuck Pastoral empire are one of the largest sheep & cattle producers in the country. No doubt Dutton would have had his ego stroked by virtue of the lobbying of the AFL boss and the close association with the multi-multi-millionaire MacLachlans, and would feel that he must not do anything that runs counter to the commercial interests of that powerful and influential family who have for generations been strong supporters of Liberal and Country Party politicians. This would include continuing to show support for the live trade industry.
Hmmm ….. Perhaps we could bring some humanity into this policy if we first tried using it with COALition pollies shown to have been involved in corrupt or treasonous policies over the past 9 dark years. Start with a good mulesing without anaesthetic, load them onto a stock truck so they can only stand then pack them into the sheep transport ships like sardines and disengage the air circulating fans for four hours every day between 10:00 and 14:00 hours.
New Zealand plans to ban all live animal exports by sea (sheep and cattle) by 30 April 2023.
It has taken over ten years for NZ to transition their industry away from live animal exports to boxed frozen/chilled meat exports. In doing so they have conducted marketing and promotional programs and established new markets throughout the Middle East and Asia and they have created a slaughter industry within New Zealand that has government oversight and delivers a high quality product to their customers – a product that NZ can be proud of.
To continue live animal exports from Australia, putting aside the ethics, implies that we are content to supply inferior and damaged product to overseas markets.
Wake up Australia !
Regarding the LNP, it simply comes down to, slightly paraphrased, a line from a Groucho Marx song: “Whatever it is, we’re against it.”
Just like in the ‘energy wars’, where Oz resources are flogged off to the highest international bidders leaving Oz citizens and secondary businesses in the lurch of undersupply at profiteering prices, in the ‘animal protein wars’, the Oz exporting farmers and fishers have exactly the same m.o.
Without regulation, and government sponsored science, those miners, farmers and fishers in their quest for wealth and domination could scour Oz’s resources to ruin as they did 50-150 years ago. That invariably the exports are targeted to enriching the elite at destination, not for the tables of the oppressed and ‘undeserving’, who cannot afford such luxuries, is of no concern to the miners, farmers and fishers. Equally of no concern is the affect on the mass of ‘undeserving’ of Oz.
We only have to look at the disastrous effect of plundering of the hardwood forests in the east and south-west principally for the purpose of railway sleepers and paper in Britain and Europe – they could have easily coped without it, but didn’t care about any affect on the far-away folk and lands of the antipodes. Such feckless processes of over-exploitation has throughout the history of Oz been underpinned by land theft and land (and seas) lock-up orchestrated by the crown, the government and its cabal of insiders. It is the signature underlying m.o. of the LNP, and remains a stranglehold today that will take years to unravel.
These exclusive exploitative processes have become immensely acculturated in Oz. In 2012, the Dutch super-trawler, the Margiris, was brought in to catch and freeze on-board bait fish from Oz waters for urgent delivery to the millions of folk in famine in north-west Africa. Full scientific studies had been passed as to the affect on sustainability of the fish stocks – it would have virtually no effect – as opposed to other regional trawling practices extant. And with additional implementation of world-class measures to limit by-catch (not used regionally by the fishers extant). Yet, it failed politically, with Labor succumbing to the noise of the uninformed and most significantly the Tasmanian (and other) Sport Fishing Associations. Regardless of science and fact, they decried that their ‘rights’ were being impinged upon and their existence under threat. To them, it appeared to matter not that their elite ‘rights’ were in fact ‘privileges’, nor did it matter to them that for years more than 80% of Oz high-end fish stocks were being harvested and sent off-shore to elite markets at extraordinary high (profiteering) prices to the detriment of the Oz ‘undeserving’ market, and doubtless it mattered not that the trawled bait fish were to be assigned to the starving ‘undeserving’ of north-west Africa.
As for the poor sheep, it’s enough that they have a life disposed to the will of humans, and way beyond the pale that they should be in misery and suffer painful death for the sake of profiteering and by influence of the pathetic threatening bleats of the farming elites and to overall disadvantage of our ‘undeserving’ masses.
One can only support and hope that Labor et al continue to unwind and regulate the disgraceful processes and elite depletive attitudes entrenched in Oz via the guile and at the hand of the lying evil olde worlde LNP.
The LNP are always about being cruel to anyone or animals, it’s in there DNA, bloody hypocrites.