In my view 37 breaches is way too many and the two exporters should have their licences suspended or even cancelled.
The Department Deputy Secretary said if further animal welfare breaches occur they would face the possible loss of their export licence, but you have to wonder how many chances they get. When the trade was resumed last year after being suspended, the Government said the industry was on notice, so I think the public would expect that any exporters now found to be treating animals inhumanely would be run out of the industry.
Even more worrying for me than the question of penalty is the fact that it wasn’t industry self-regulation that brought these breaches to light, it was Animals Australia- Lyn White and her little video camera. You have to wonder whether we are really seeing the tip of the iceberg.
I think the only way we are going to ensure our animals are not being mistreated is to insist on mandatory stunning- that all animals are stunned before being killed. I further think we should be supporting proposals for the establishment of abattoirs in northern Australia, such as the Australian Agricultural Company proposal for Livingstone Valley south of Darwin, and transitioning away from live exports and into domestic processing, which is better for both animal welfare and for Australian jobs.
The fact remains while we continue to send animals to countries with no animal welfare laws, we will always have animals being abused. I don't know how many approved abs there are in Indonesia at present, but I wonder why it is necessary to send cattle to so many abs, which makes maintaining standards, training etc. even more difficult. I think all cattle from Australia should go to one centralized ab that pre-stuns and under which we can have more control. The current system is not working. In addition according to the MLA/Livecorp joint submission to the Senate as at 30/6/11 there were 112 restraint boxes, 12 of which were converted to stunning boxes and 3 have been replaced by the Mark IV. That leaves 97 Mark I restraint boxes, can you advise if they are still in abs? There aren't to my knowledge 97 approved abs. These restraint boxes were installed by the MLA and when I questioned them about it, they more or less replied it was not their problem. Our country paid for and installed these boxes that we now know breach the OIE world standards, so we should replace them. I want to know what is happening with them? and how many are still in operation? The industry is vile and doesn't provide as much for the economy as processed does, so let's stop propping it up with government subsidises and start subidising the processing sector in Australia.
ReplyDelete