Live sheep shippers seek ban exemption

Live sheep exporters are hoping to get special permission to send a consignment of 56,000 sheep and 400 cattle from Fremantle port within 10 days.

Australian Livestock Exporters' Council chief executive officer Mark Harvey-Sutton.

Live sheep exporters are hoping to get special permission to send a consignment of 56,000 sheep and 400 cattle from Fremantle port within 10 days, and say any delay could risk animal deaths from hot summer weather and humidity in their Middle East destination.

A moratorium on exporting live sheep during the northern summer is due to come into effect today for a period of three months, but Mark Harvey-Sutton, from the Australian Livestock Export Council, says Perth-based exporter RETWA is hoping the federal Agriculture Department will award an exemption that would allow its consignment, which is stuck in Perth feedlots, to leave for Kuwait in less than 10 days.

“We’ve been making the point that a hasty decision is needed, but it’s a complex legal step,” he says.

An outbreak of COVID-19 on board the intended carrier ship, the Al Kuwait, has seen nearly half its 48 crew infected and quarantined in a Perth hotel. One of 20 crew members testing positive was taken from hotel quarantine to hospital overnight.

Mr Harvey-Sutton said it was unlikely the RETWA-owned ship, which must undergo deep cleaning before being allowed to leave, would be used. One of its other ships, the Al Messilah, has been called back from South Africa and is on its way to ­Fremantle.

If that ship is permitted to load stock and leave in the first weeks of June, it risks confronting similar high temperatures and humid conditions to those in 2016 that caused thousands of sheep to die in transit on the Al Messilah and the Awassi Express.

The highly publicised deaths led the federal government to impose the three-month ban on live export into the Middle Eastern summer, and it cancelled the export licence of Perth-based Emanuel Exports. Emanuel is the owner of the stranded 56,000 sheep, but is exporting them under RETWA’s licence.