Should we trust Australia’s Department of Agriculture to regulate live export?
My experience is that the department’s employees have little concept of the ramifications of their work. This was evident when I was working for them in 2007. I’d been directly involved in live export for nine years as a shipboard veterinarian.
No information from my sweaty, blood-soaked daily voyage reports, made from the ship’s bridge while we sailed through environmental disasters, war zones and pirate-infested waters, was used. The only information retained was the percentage of voyage deaths. Many cows I euthanised and threw into the ocean.
The department had hired me for my industry knowledge, but I might as well have scrubbed toilets and emptied bins. Within weeks I quit, returning to the “lion’s den” of shipping. There, as a vet, I knew I could make a positive difference. It was clear the government was making hollow promises of reform.
I did 57 long-haul voyages to many places that Getaway will never do a holiday special on. I put up with the crap, both literal and figurative. I wrote voyage and specialised reports, many containing grave welfare concerns. All ignored. A few times I wanted to see if anyone was paying attention in Canberra; I reported cause-of-death on daily voyage reports as “snakebite”, “assassination” and “bad attitude”. Not an eyebrow was raised!
In 2012, I returned to the department to be the technical adviser for the rewriting of the Australian Standards for Exporting Livestock (ASEL). I provided scientific and photographic evidence of legislative welfare failures. ASEL covers from the Australian farm-gate to when the surviving animals take their first step off of the ship overseas. Shipboard standards are 100% within the department’s control. It’s now 2016 and the needed changes have not been made.
I was told by the department that I had done my work competently and my technical expertise was valued, but they then refused to let me continue any work on live export or animal welfare-related topics because the industry, which the department regulates, didn’t like my involvement. This behaviour is legally defined as “regulatory capture”. It’s illegal.
The regulation of the live export trade clearly cannot, and should not, be trusted to organisations that concurrently profit from and/or promote this trade. It’s a direct conflict of interest and a disgrace.
The latest industry and government claims that continuing with the status quo provides the regulators some magical power over foreign practices and regulations is imaginative, at best. I call it a farrago of misinformation, misleading propaganda and corruption.
Industry and the government ride their PR “high horse”, extolling the virtues of the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System (ESCAS). However, ESCAS was not prompted by the “regulators”, but by social pressure from an outraged Australian community. We now have a charity taking considerable risks to investigate and report breaches of regulations to a department unwilling to appropriately sanction offending exporters.
The enemy of acceptable animal welfare is poor policy. Policy that allows a conflict of interest to prevent reform.
Focus in recent years has been on the abhorrent treatment of Australian animals in importing countries. What shouldn’t be forgotten is what animals endure before they get there. Shipboard reform attempts have repeatedly and vehemently been resisted on all occasions by industry and government.
The industry is notorious for trashing research findings that are not financially attractive. I’ve personally had researchers treat me like a Catholic priest to whom they make their confessions. Industry makes it clear their scientific findings are never to see the light of day as they confirm the trade cannot be commercially viable and have acceptable animal welfare guarantees.
It’s time to implement the research already done, stop wasting farmers’ and taxpayers’ dollars. Start treating our animals like the vulnerable, living, feeling creatures they are.
After having my eyes opened to the practices I was delivering animals to by Four Corners’ — “A Bloody Business”, in 2011 — I wished I had euthanised more animals on ships and not put them through the pain of healing, only to be brutally handled and killed elsewhere.
I strongly believe the toothless tiger regulators in this abhorrent trade have directly contributed to Australia’s agricultural economic instability.
My experience has shown me that this industry lacks loyalty to Australia’s farmers, workers and animals. The trade picks and chooses when it trades from Australia, based on global fluctuations and “product” availability.
Knowing that several exporters bought meat-processing plants immediately after Four Corners in 2011, I ask you, is this an industry out to enhance Australia or is this just another business that is hedging their bets?
All Australian animals, livestock workers, farmers and the reputation of Australia need an independent animal welfare regulator.
Being an omnivore I am not required to have an ethical position on another other being in the food chain.
And why not? Why can’t you have an ethical position on animal cruelty?
Is this irony?
No, pig (sic!) ignorance.
Having being a person with the field of welfare a decade ago or so, what the Vet is saying is that there has not been any change to structural system of the unwritten rule of the people who are in charge, there is the cant of animal welfare but the reality is and has always been what ever it takes to bring I money is always acceptable, regardless of what the stated behaviour is on the piece of paper that is the legislation, oh well, any changes to the to the rhetoric will always outweigh the reality, it is sad live we lead when we are expected to kow-tow to the people who wield the power of our reality.
Considering Australia’s high quarantine standards & reputation (ie: no Mad Cow disease) it’s inexplicable why we can’t export pre-packaged meat killed according to religious codes demanded by particular overseas markets.
We have a premium product – surely we should be in a position to decide which meat leaves this country & the circumstances in which it leaves.
That has been my position for years! Reopen all the closed abattoirs, regenerate employment, create new industries, encourage regional settlement, but most important, slaughter HUMANELY.
I’m a vegan, and have been for several years, but I know that a plant-based diet for all is some time off. In the meantime, spare a thought for other sentient creatures.
The treatment of all livestock shipped out of anywhere in the world is nothing short of barbaric, conditions on most ships fail to meet any reasonable standard at all and the killing process at the other end requires no comment (we have all seen enough to be informed).
For a nation that pretends to care regarding animal welfare we do a far less that stellar job of enforcing what are pretty reasonable standards. The author is right in as much as the nexus between business and regulator/enforcement should be broken entirely.
Strange how once again we see links between big business and government departments that have no reason to exist, the only factor of importance to the exporters is profit, an the only thing that matters to politicians is keeping big business happy.
The only way to clear this mess up is to appoint independent Vets to travel on all ships with no duties other than to observe and report not to Primary Industry but to a Senate standing committee that has the power to withdraw export licences.
Yes I too eat meat, but I can also care about other sentient beings.
Filthy lucre is what matters, nothing else. Animal welfare is of no concern to the farming community, it seems they really don’t care, nor does Tomato Joyce.