The Australian government has suspended the export of live cattle to Indonesia, as authorities halted nearly 2,000 cattle being loaded onto a ship in Western Australiabound for Indonesia.
The suspension ofshipments worth more than $318 million a year came on Monday in response to public outrage and the angeramong Labor Party Members of Parliamentafter the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners show aired video footage showingcattle being whipped and bleeding to death after their throats were cut at 12 Indonesian abattoirs.
Indonesia accounts for about 60% of Australia's live cattle exports.
Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig, who signed the order suspending trade to, said that the ban is expected to remain in placeat least 10 daysuntil mechanisms for improved treatment of live cattle throughout the supply chain are put into place.
“In light of the evidence presented to us, we have resolved to put a total suspension in place,” Prime Minister Julia Gillard told livestock officials in the country’s Northern Territory. She said Australia would be working closely with Indonesia, and with its own domestic producers, to ensure that“major changes to the way cattle are handled” in Indonesian slaughterhouses can be enacted.
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How many violations are going on in this photo? When slaughter conditions are this bad, the blame for animal abuse can hardly be placed on Australian cattle producers. To be clear, the abuse witnessed on yet another series of horrifying video clips documents what happens after livestock are offloaded in Indonesia. The mishandling, abusive treatment and painful slaughter practices depicted occurred in primitive facilities that are totally unregulated by the Indonesian government. Some of the worst scenes appear to take place in what is merely an empty room, hardly worthy to be described as “an abattoir.”
To repeat: The cruelty takes place totally outside Australia, and neither Aussie producers nor wholesale traders are implicated in any of the abuse, although the country’s leading animal welfare groups, Animals Australia and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals joined forces to record a tearful online plea (and solicitation of donations, of course) for Gillard’s government to ban all live exports.
Having traveled extensively throughout the country, since my wife is Australian, and having toured much of Southeast Asia, I can attest that the practices and standards of cattle production Down Under are among the best in the world. Conversely, the grim conditions that characterize animal slaughter in China, Vietnam and Indonesia are limited only by the cruelty and depraved indifference of the generally poverty-stricken, uneducated work force employed to “handle” the livestock.
At the receiving pens, pigs are deliberately thrown off the back of trucks to try to break their legs so they won’t run away as farmers are unloading their animals. Cattle are beaten with wooden sticks and whips until they stumble to the ground, so that their legs can be hobbled prior to having their throats slit. Sheep are simply bashed on the head to subdue them, since proper holding corrals and trained handlers are often non-existent.
Conditions are generally horrid, unsanitary and brutally primitive. Facilities that routinely handle dozens of cattle a day across much of Southeast Asia would be shuttered in a heartbeat if they attempted to operate in a similar manner here in The States.
An opposing view
Of course, officials in Indonesia begged to differ, claiming the move was political.
“This is Australia’s political horse-trading, which aims to prevent Indonesia from providing its own cows,” Herman Khaeron, Indonesian House of Representatives agriculture commission deputy chairman,told the Antara news agency. He said Australia was “toying with Indonesia” by suspending cattle exports.
“Australia is happy to see (Indonesia) depending on it to export frozen meat because Indonesia is a huge market,” he said. Indonesiaimported 120,000 tons of frozen meat and 600,000 animals in 2010, mostly from Australia. The country is planning to expand its own cattle industry by reducing imports of frozen meat to 50,000 tons and increasing the number of cows retained in its domestic herds, Khaeronsaid.
Herman dismissed the notion that animal cruelty had occurred at the slaughterhouses.
“(Australia) said (the slaughterhouse ways) were inhumane, but that’s the way to kill (an animal). What other ways are there?” he said.
The truth is, Indonesian abattoirs are in no rush to implement captive bolt stunning for cattle exported from Australia, because such a system would be opposed by many as contrary to Islamic strictures.The Indonesian Beef Producer & Lot Feeder Association told reporters that convincing abattoirs to accept stunning could take time, due to religious objections.
Animals Australia leader Lyn White is well aware of the real causes of the problems depicted on the video footage her group collected. Yet she casts the problem as one that Australian cattle producers and meat industry officials need to confront. Her emotional condemnation of the abuse in the so-called abattoirs in Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia is well-founded.
It’s just directed at the wrong people.
“We need support from the Indonesian government to educate people; some of them still think stunning is not halal,” said Joni Liano, Indonesian Meat Producers and Feedlot Association. Indonesia’s domestic market could be crippled if a total ban on live exports were implemented, he said.
Officials with Meat & Livestock Australia and LiveCorp, which oversees live cattle exports, said that the Indonesia Ulema Council (MUI), the Islamic clerical council responsible for certifying meat as halal, would be unlikely to certify hundreds of small abattoirs to use stunners. The two organizations abandoned a trial of stunning in Indonesian packing plants last year, according to a 2010 report, as the MUI opposed the use of stunning and the workers werepoorlytrained.
Until Southeast Asian governments implement strict regulations on animal handling, or Islamic authorities soften their stance on humane slaughter, Australian Labor MP Stephen Jones may have the best idea of all. He called for his country’s live cattle exportsto be phased out in favor of creating more jobs in Australian packing plants.
“When I see cattle being loaded onto export ships, I see Australian jobs (being shipped overseas),” Jones said.
Unfortunately, his idea is one that only benefits Australian cattle producers, and right now, they’re being cast as the villains.
Dan Murphy is a veteran food-industry journalist and commentator
How many violations are going on in this photo? When slaughter conditions are this bad, the blame for animal abuse can hardly be placed on Australian cattle producers. To be clear, the abuse witnessed on yet another series of horrifying video clips documents what happens after livestock are offloaded in Indonesia. The mishandling, abusive treatment and painful slaughter practices depicted occurred in primitive facilities that are totally unregulated by the Indonesian government. Some of the worst scenes appear to take place in what is merely an empty room, hardly worthy to be described as “an abattoir.”
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