Animal groups condemn slaughter practices
October 29, 2003
A stun gun blow to the head is a small mercy administered by Australian abattoirs to deaden the agony of slaughter, but most livestock exported to the Middle East must bleed to death.
The 50,000 sheep stranded aboard the Saudi-bound Cormo Express for 11 weeks - two months longer than usual - has outraged animal welfare groups and stirred a community backlash against the Federal Government and the export industry body, LiveCorp.
After weeks of floundering diplomatic attempts to find a new buyer for the sheep following their rejection by the Saudis over a scabby mouth outbreak, the mob was this week offloaded to Eritrea as a $10 million gift paid for by Australian taxpayers.
Muslim and Jewish communities have been lumped together for criticism by animal welfare groups who say their livestock slaughter methods under religious ritual are inhumane and outdated.
Halal and kosher meat preparation traditionally require that slaughter be carried out with a single cut to the throat while the animal is still alive, but anti-cruelty campaigners say there is no religious reason to forbid pre-stunning.
The death throes of an animal suffering a mortal throat gash are commonly dismissed as "just twitching nerves" despite veterinary research which shows sheep remain conscious of the pain for 30-40 seconds. For cattle, it's more like 90 seconds due to a secondary blood supply to the brain that prolongs the suffering.
Knife-only killings are still accepted as normal practice throughout the Middle East and in parts of Africa and Asia.
Australian state governments have set strict guidelines for local abattoirs which must use captive-bolt stun guns even for kosher and halal prepared meat, yet the Commonwealth allows livestock to be subjected to butchery methods overseas that would never be tolerated at home.
Australia is the world's biggest livestock exporter, now sailing on the sheep's back with a $1 billion-plus trade on the hoof.
Last year, Australia shipped out 6,062,923 head of sheep and 3,336,846 head of cattle as well as 136,125 goats.
Animal Liberation NSW executive director Mark Pearson said the only meat exported from Australia to the Middle East should be wrapped in plastic.
He said poor training and killing facilities made for horrendous slaughters and there was usually no "knocking box" to secure animals as they struggled against the slaughtermen.
"They're usually just on a tile floor, so the floor is wet and slippery from water and blood; the animal's falling all over the place and it's slid around to face Mecca and it's writhing and distressed because of the smell of blood and having seen other animals slaughtered," Mr Pearson told AAP.
"There are practices like in (one particular) abattoir in Egypt to get the animals down, they cut the tendons of their legs, smash their knees and stab their eyes to try and control the animals that are terrified and jumping all over the floor - and then it has its throat cut without any stunning.
"Even if we sent them off on the QEII and nothing went wrong, when they step off that ship at the other end, a lot goes wrong and a lot of circumstances we wouldn't tolerate if we were aware."
Apart from animal welfare issues, Mr Pearson said Australia's live export trade was absurd because jobs and value adding opportunities were lost while five chilled carcases could fit in the area taken up by one live sheep on a ship.
He said Australia's animal protection laws became a farce when exporters could ship livestock to the other side of the world, knowing what kind of fate lay ahead.
"Australia needs to take a stand on animal welfare and be a recognised civilised country which says 'no, we will not provide a demand from another country if it is going to have a severe, adverse animal welfare impact'," he said.
But Australia could not resort to "neo-colonial cultural posturing" and tell other countries how to handle our animals, a spokesman for federal Agriculture Minister Warren Truss said.
"We have no sovereignty in foreign countries and we have no right to tell them how they should do things," the spokesman told AAP.
Australia had an Arabic-speaking vet stationed in the Middle East to assist with training and animal care, and the spokesman said improved slaughter methods overseas would be achieved by continued engagement through trade.
RSPCA president Dr Hugh Wirth has been an outspoken critic of the Cormo Express debacle and controversially demanded the sheep be slaughtered at sea to end their misery.
"I firmly know that pre-stunned animals die humanely - it makes a huge difference because a stunned animal doesn't feel any pain whatsoever," Dr Wirth said.
"You can't mix a western-style abattoir killing with a religious killing, it doesn't work.
"All of the religious killing methods that are mentioned either in the Koran or the Bible are performed on a single animal, not a group of animals, in a stall, not in an abattoir."
A spokesman for LiveCorp said the desire for higher animal welfare standards overseas would not be achieved by Australia exiting the market, in place of countries like Kenya and Somalia.
"There's less likelihood of a stun gun being used without Australia (in the marketplace), now that the Kenyans are in there," the spokesman said.
