Live export industry still standing, 10 years on from snap ban

It’s been 10 years since the snap live export ban. Where is the industry now?

Sheep being transported to the Al Kuwait ship in Fremantle Harbour in June last year.

Live exports remain an integral part of Australia’s cattle industry despite the fallout from the trade’s suspension a decade ago.

And while many predicted the live export ban, which stemmed from an ABC Four Corners report on cruelty in Indonesian abattoirs, would see the industry’s demise, the proportion of cattle sold this way has grown proportionally.

This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the six-week suspension of live exports, a move that decimated the industry and took a huge emotional and financial toll on northern cattle producers.

Cattle in front of feed on a ship in Darwin in 2018. Picture: Keri Megelus

It led to the establishment of the Export Supply Chain Assurance Scheme, which was designed to improve standards in live exports, a move which has fixed the systemic issues which were plaguing the industry according to its peak body.

Australian Livestock Exporters Council chief executive Mark Harvey-Sutton said ESCAS had ensured safeguards in animal welfare in all markets.

“Isolated issues do occur and we do get non-compliance (with ESCAS), but the process now minimises this as much as possible,” Mr Harvey-Sutton said.

“The proportion of livestock (percentage of national herd) has not dwindled since that time and has actually grown slightly.

“What Covid-19 has taught us is that food security for so many of our customers is vitally important and while prices are historically high, there is still demand for Australian stock.”

While the industry has made significant changes since the 2011 ban, there has been a number of controversies — notably 2400 sheep died on an Emanuel Exports ship from Fremantle to the Middle East in August 2017 due to heat stress and an Animals Australia investigation showed what were reportedly Australian cattle being slaughtered with a sledgehammer in Vietnamese abattoirs in 2016 — which results in renewed calls for live exports to be completely banned.

Hedland Export Depot owner Paul Brown, Port Hedland, Western Australia, said his business was still feeling the effects of the ban a decade later.

“We had nearly six years without a shipment which caused pastoralists to create a different sales model than relying on exporters, and it is taking us a long time to restore that confidence,” Mr Brown said.

“We lost millions of dollars in business and the year-on-year growth we were experiencing prior to the ban, and while the claim we may receive through the class action may help relieve the immediate action from the past 10 years, we still have a business that is unable to operate at more than 20 per cent of the throughput we had before the ban.”

Mr Brown said the industry was already tackling issues of animal welfare in work between Australian and Indonesian stakeholders before the then Minister for Agriculture Joe Ludwig suspended the trade in 2011.

A Ban Live Export rally. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

He said it was the lack of care and understanding by the Federal Government at the time followed by an unnecessary abuse of government overreach that caused the most harm.

“The government failed in its most basic form in the need to support industry to implement change that would cause little disruption to an entire industry nation-wide, rather than pandering to votes on the floor of parliament for its own survival,” he said.

Mr Brown said live exports would “undoubtedly survive”.

“We are proving that we are capable of delivering on the promise we have made to producers, government and the public to deliver a better animal welfare outcome,” he said.

“While market forces will change for some sectors such as sheep, the demand for live cattle from our close neighbours like Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and China will ensure that we have a market for live cattle for many decades to come.

“Across the whole of the live cattle and sheep industry we have proven that we are the best in the world at delivering a healthy product to our customers and our 99.9 per cent success rate for animal welfare is testament to that.

“But we can’t forget our customers in the Middle East and other nations that have relied on Australia for more than 50 years which have also benefited from the improvements in animal welfare that we are delivering for them as well.”

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