LiveCorp, Meat & Livestock Australia, Cattle Council of Australia and the Dept. of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry have been found severely wanting in their attitude to animal welfare with regard to Australia's live animal export industry, given the ABC Four Corners episode A Bloody Business aired on 30 May 2011.
By the same token; these recent revelations have justified NSW North Coast Federal Labor MP for Page, Janelle Saffin, raising concerns about live exports in her 16 March 2010 House of Representatives motion in support of Halal frozen meat exports.
A motion which saw her publicly attacked at the time by the Nationals for Regional Australia's Senator Fiona Nash.
Those having some oversight of the live animal export industry apparently only began to stir over current welfare concerns once they were approached by the Four Corners investigative team and, the Australian beef industry will have no-one to blame but itself for any negative impacts felt by its members.
Following a report published January this year by industry and government, painting a positive picture of conditions in Indonesia, animal welfare campaigners took their own cameras into abattoirs to record the conditions for themselves. That footage reveals that Australian training of the slaughtermen in Indonesia has been grossly inadequate. Animals smash their heads repeatedly on concrete as they struggle against ropes, take minutes to die in agony after repeated often clumsy cuts to the throat. In some cases there is abject and horrifying cruelty - kicking, hitting, eye-gouging and tail-breaking - as workers try to force the cattle to go into the slaughter boxes installed by the Australian industry, with Australian Government support. [Excerpt from transcript of A Bloody Business,30 May 2011]A Bloody Business video on demand*
* Warning this video contains graphic images
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