 Millions of
animals are sent from Australian shores on crowded ships to endure terrifying
handling and brutal slaughter in areas such as the Middle
East with no animal protection laws.
Over the past 30 years Australia’s live export industry has
exported over 150 million animals to the Middle East – to countries where there
are no laws to protect them from acts of cruelty. During this time, some
2.5 million have died en route.
Investigations by campaign group Animals Australia since
2003 have gathered evidence of gross mishandling, suffering, distress and terrible
cruelty prior to slaughter, while fully conscious in the major importing
countries.
Four separate investigations by Animals Australia in the
Middle East have documented terrible abuses of Australian animals, including
video footage of cows having their tendons slashed and being stabbed in the
eyes in Cairo’s Bassateen abattoir in Egypt. The
footage went to air on 60 Minutes in
2006.
Sheep are regularly bought by individual buyers for home
slaughter. Video footage shows that they are trussed up with rope, dragged by
their horns, legs and fleece, tossed off trucks and shoved into car boots in a
region where temperatures are regularly above 40 degrees centigrade in summer.
In abattoirs and private homes they face a terrifying slaughter, as their
throats will be cut while they are fully conscious. In slaughterhouses they are
trussed up over a ‘blood drain’ where they witness their mates being killed in
this brutal fashion, the fear in their eyes obvious as they know the same fate
is awaiting them.
As if their treatment upon arrival in these countries is not
bad enough, these animals also endure horrendous long journeys to the
destinations. Freedom of Information (FOI)-obtained AQIS investigation reports
into high mortality live export shipments, revealed that heat stress,
septicaemia from leg wounds, and acute pneumonia led to the deaths of 248
cattle aboard a horror journey of the ‘MV Maysora’ from Australia to Israel in
2006. A further 200-plus cattle died of pneumonia, or ‘shipping fever’ as
the Israeli vets call it, after being unloaded more than three weeks after
their journey began.
According to Animals Australia, over 36,000 sheep from this
country died en route in 2006 despite industry and government claims that they
have the “best standards in the world”.
Action:
Email the Agriculture
Minister Tony Burke
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urging him to ban live exports.
Contact Kevin Rudd with
your comments via on online form at www.pm.gov.au/contact/index.cfm
Visit www.liveexport-indefensible.com
and www.animalsaustralia.org to learn about other ways to help stop the live
export trade.
Image: Animals Australia
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