This is the Australian Senate Rural Affairs and Transport—References Committee composition:
Members
Senator Heffernan (Chair), Senator Sterle (Deputy Chair) and Senators O'Brien, McGauran, Milne and Nash
Substitute member
Senator Siewert to replace Senator Milne for the committee's inquiry into operational issues in export grain networks
Senator Siewert to replace Senator Milne for the committee's inquiry into live export markets
Participating members
Senators Abetz, Adams, Back, Barnett, Bernardi, Bilyk, Birmingham, Bishop, Boswell, Boyce, Brandis, Bob Brown, Carol Brown, Bushby, Cameron, Cash, Colbeck, Coonan, Cormann, Crossin, Eggleston, Faulkner, Ferguson, Fierravanti-Wells, Fielding, Fifield, Fisher, Forshaw, Furner, Hanson-Young, Heffernan, Humphries, Hurley, Hutchins, Johnston, Joyce, Kroger, Ludlam, Macdonald, McEwen, Marshall, Mason, Milne, Minchin, Moore, Parry, Payne, Polley, Pratt, Ronaldson, Ryan, Scullion, Siewert, Stephens, Troeth, Trood, Williams, Wortley and Xenophon
This is one of four inquiries the RAAT committee senators are conducting:
Improvements in animal welfare for Australian live exports.
The Inquiry is taking submissions until 15 July 2011.
This is senators’ problem:
THE Australian meat industry was warned of gross animal welfare abuses in Indonesian abattoirs long before shocking footage of the inhumane treatment of Australian cattle surfaced last month.
Meat and Livestock Australia and LiveCorp have repeatedly claimed that both bodies were unaware of the extent of animal welfare problems in Indonesia before the airing of a Four Corners program on May 30.
How much they knew is now the subject of a Senate inquiry.
Yet a report, commissioned by MLA and LiveCorp and handed to the bodies early last year, extensively documents every aspect of the abuse revealed last month.
The report makes repeated references to the shortcomings of the Australian-made restraining boxes, warns about the non-compliance with World Organisation for Animal Health standards, and says only four abattoirs in Indonesia had stun guns.
Most damning are accounts of slaughtering fully conscious animals, which suffered protracted, agonising deaths.
''At an abattoir in Sumatra the neck was struck with a knife using a hard impact to sever the skin above the larynx and then up to 18 cuts were made to severe the neck and both arteries,'' the report says.
''Bleeding was impaired in 10 per cent of cattle … possibly resulting in extended consciousness … In some instances where stunning was not used, the delay between restraint and slaughter was significant.''
On the performance of the restraining box, ''finding better methods of restraint with higher animal welfare outcomes is essential'', the report concludes. The ''mark 2'' box, designed to solve the problems, makes the plight of the animals even worse, the report says, to the point of being ''not acceptable''.
Thrashing, prostrate animals bashed their heads on the box's concrete plinth an average of 3.5 times before death. The report says: ''Where the severity of the fall was severe and head slapping occurred, significant animal welfare issues were identified that should be addressed.''
The halal practice of dousing the thrashing animal with water requires ''revision'', as ''disturbed behaviour … was particularly apparent when buckets of water were thrown over the animal before slaughter''……
[The Sydney Morning Herald 25 June 2011]
It is your problem also. Get involved.
Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) response 24 June 2011
UPDATE:
From the Macedon Ranges Weekly 22 June 2011:
LARGE cattle could suffer protracted deaths from throat cutting in Australian abattoirs, a government report investigating animal welfare issues surrounding ritual slaughter has found.
Animal welfare groups, Greens, independent MPS and some Labor backbenchers have criticised the absence of mandatory stunning in the proposal the Australian Government has taken to Indonesia to reopen the live cattle export trade. Yet government-approved slaughter without stunning continues daily in Australian abattoirs.
The 2008 report, commissioned by the Primary Industries standing committee and written by the Department of Agriculture's animal welfare branch, recommended that the practice of allowing traditional Halal and Kosher slaughter, which requires the throat of a beast to be slit while it is still sentient, be discontinued for large animals such as fully grown cattle because research showed it could take more than two minutes for such animals to lose consciousness.
However, state and federal governments have failed to adopt the report's recommendations that a size limit be set on animals fit for slaughter without stunning and that alternative methods - which would render an animal unconscious before having its throat cut but still be acceptable to specific religious practices - should be investigated.
In 2009, a concerned member of the public, Harry Roden, from Newtown, wrote to the then minister for agriculture, Tony Burke, requesting the practice cease on grounds of cruelty.
Mr Roden received a response from Allen Grant, the executive manager of the department's Agricultural Productivity Division.
The letter, obtained by the Herald, dismissed Mr Roden's concerns and stated that ''the slaughter of livestock without stunning is a longstanding practice to meet the stated requirements of particular religious groups. Australia's management and control of this practice is consistent with the World Organisation for Animal Health's animal welfare guidelines.''
The Herald asked the Department of Agriculture for a list of the abattoirs granted exemptions of the stun-before-slaughter rule but it refused, saying that most approved arrangements were held by state and territory regulators. South Australia has nine and Victoria three abattoirs that were government-approved for ritual slaughter. *
Photographs sourced from Google Images
