Last week the Four Comers program highlighted appalling killing conditions of cattle being slaughtered in Indonesian abattoirs.
You wouldn’t find a thinking person who would condone such treatment of livestock, though.
It gave opportunistic extremists, including the present minority Labor Govt, without a mandate, to make any real changes and the opportunity to go off half-cocked with knee jerk reactions. eg, Renegade Andrew Wilkie MP, in calling for an immediate ban on live exports to Indonesia said, quote, “animal welfare considerations come before all else”.
One can only extrapolate from that, that animals have precedence over humans; and any follow-on effect which drastically affects people is irrelevant.
The Greens also called for a total ban on live cattle exports without any idea or understanding what flow-on ramifications this will create. Unions, along with the Greens, called for the cattle to be killed in Australia to protect jobs. What an ignorant over simplification of the facts.
Cattle producers this year are enjoying a 10 per cent price rise on top of prices which have been static for 20 years.
This is largely due to the increased live export trade amounting to 800,000 head per annum supplied from the top end of Australia. This market opportunity has given them a level of reasonable returns not previously seen after years of droughts and now floods.
The suggestion that the cattle can be brought down to southern markets is naivety to the extreme. Anyone who had any thoughts for animal welfare wouldn’t condone transporting cattle for thousands of kilometres on trucks with subsequent bruising, stress etc. Think of the logistics, over ten thousand semi-trailer loads to shift this many or one third as many road trains for part of the way, where they are permissible.
They would have to be given numerous rest periods off truck along the way to be fed and watered, cost of transporting would be as much as cattle are worth. But then the Govt said, oh! we will subsidise the cost of this exercise, yeh right!!
Of course, throw around more money we haven’t got, but thinking about it, compensation to the rural community is a dirty word nowadays.
Abattoirs in southern states are now already stretched to the limit with their throughput. The rules of supply and demand now dictate prices paid for cattle. Injecting another 800,000 onto the southern slaughter markets would send prices drastically spiralling downwards. New markets to offload the additional meat would have to be found in a very competitive world scene, which would take a lot of time
What people haven’t been told is that Indonesia stopped buying cattle from Australia a few months ago, ready to slaughter, and would only accept live cattle under 300kgs liveweight which are realistically too small to kill. When the small cattle arrive over there, they are distributed to farmers to grow on for a few months in feedlots mainly up to slaughter size.
What isn’t being said is that the Meat Industry Authority is a totally grower funded body coming from a levy of $5 a head on all cattle sold. They have staff which find new markets, service existing markets with many issues, as well as help overseas farmers with nutritional advice for feeding stock for better growth outcomes and also attend to welfare considerations as they arise.
What stuck up my nose was the way in which Minister for Agriculture Ludwig shamelessly, with a very pleased look on his face, announced the suspension of the live cattle trade with no understanding whatsoever of the ramifications which he had created for the cattle industry as a whole. The top end farmers lost income, industry associated jobs, our economy, the outcome for the many thousands of cattle already in transit and the risk of losing completely a substantial market which we have developed over many years.
For the minister to restore any sort of credibility, he must reverse his harsh short-sighted, ill-informed decision and, through consultation, request that we negotiate with them on our terms for change if they wish to continue the cattle trade with us. Simply offer to send over personal to bring about necessary change to their long-standing barbaric slaughter practices in the few problem abattoirs up to a standard which complies with universally accepted animal welfare practices immediately.
Keith Dunlop
Port Macquarie
