China found to have the highest mortality rate for live export, new report finds

The live export sector’s first state of the industry report has been released, at it battles to keep afloat. We break down the key findings.

China has emerged as the $1 billion live export industry’s nemesis with the highest in-voyage mortality level of all destinations in 2023.

And while many think live exports and mortalities are a northern Australian issue, the latest statistics from an industry report released this week show the south could be adding to the challenges.

With 7 per cent of all cattle exports going to North Asia, it’s shone a spotlight on voyage length as a contributing factor, with the highest mortality rate (0.1 per cent) on voyages to China.

The state of the industry report, released by LiveCorp this week, said most of the cattle going into China were dairy cattle from southern Australia.

The mortality levels were detailed against destination in the report, with a trend emerging between rises in death rates and voyage length.

The lowest mortality level was 0.03 per cent for cattle sent to Indonesia, where the average journey is 7.6 days.

Of the 358,309 cattle exported to this destination, 107 died en route.

This compared to China, where the mortality rate was the highest for all cattle exported live, at 0.1 per cent. There were 78,723 cattle exported to China in 2023, of which 79 didn’t make it on the journey which had an average length of 18.9 days.

On the longest export trip – to the Red Sea – it took an average of 21.4 days from loading of cattle in Australia to unloading in that region, and the longer voyage translated to the second highest mortality rate of 0.09 per cent, or 68 of the 75,321 cattle exported there.

The report found the average mortality rate was 0.05 or 333 cattle and almost 50 per cent of cattle voyages had no deaths at all.

“This reflects overall low voyage mortality rates, voyage length and the historically smaller average size of consignments,” the report found.

The news was not quite as rosy for live sheep exports, with a mortality rate of 0.25 per cent for stock going into the Persian Gulf (Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) and 0.06 per cent into the Red Sea ports of Israel and Jordan.

And while the report noted that there were 1134 sheep which died in the live export process during 2023, there was a footnote to the figures.

“Due to the difficultly in accurately counting tens of thousands of sheep on each ship, the number listed at loading and discharge may not always align,” the report found.

LiveCorp chief executive officer Wayne Collier said the report “collated and analysed the data in different ways to help answer some common questions, like how many consignments of cattle and sheep leave Australia each year, and how long they spend travelling to different regions”.

“Early each year, we’ll report on the state of the industry in the previous calendar year, drawing on fresh insights from the data being collected on ships and by the regulator, to provide the Australian community with a single source of truth on how the industry is responding to areas that matter most to them,” Mr Collier said.