Those that survive appalling conditions reap huge profits for Australia

Kelly McParland
National Post

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

The MV Cormo Express is a big boat, not an enormous boat -- big enough to cram more than 60,000 sheep into its pens, though not nearly the 100,000-plus the really huge carriers can manage.

Still, that many sheep can get pretty ripe, especially if several thousand of them are already dead, thousands more are diseased, and they've been floating around the Persian Gulf for six weeks under a baking sun, coated in their own wastes.

No wonder the owners of the 57,000 sheep on the Cormo Express are having trouble unloading them, even after offering to give them away free.

The animals were sold by Australian farmers to a Saudi trader, but the Saudi government refused to grant entry, claiming 6% were afflicted with scabby mouth disease, a viral infection that causes scabs around the mouth and face of the sheep but usually goes away after a few weeks. The Australians say the sheep were checked before they left port at Fremantle in June, and a vet on board found only 0.3% had scabby mouth, but the Saudis refuse to let another vet investigate the discrepancy.

The usual procedure in a situation like this is to try and dump the sheep at a discount to a less fussy country, but the United Arab Emirates has already turned them down, and with word getting around, it is now almost impossible to get rid of them, even for free.

Temperatures in the Gulf are about 40C and about 3,500 of the sheep are said to have died, but there is still no solution in sight.

It is all drawing a lot of unwanted attention to a thriving industry the Australians would just as soon didn't get publicized.

Australia earns close to $1-billion a year selling live animals, mostly sheep and cattle, across Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

The bulk of the business is in and around the Gulf, but there is also demand from Indonesia, and a promising contract was signed in 2001 to ship cattle to Vietnam.

Australia is not the only exporter -- New Zealand, Turkey and some African countries are also active -- but Australia is the biggest, shipping six million sheep and a million head of cattle a year.

Even by the standards of most slaughterhouses, the conditions are pretty disgusting. Most of the sheep are raised far from the coast and endure long journeys by truck or train to get to port. There, they're penned up for a while to get them used to the pellets they'll be fed on board, instead of the grass and hay they're accustomed to.

The animals are packed three per square metre in two tiers per deck, so tens of thousands can be conveniently crammed into tiny spaces.

Often, feeding room is limited, so the animals have to try and climb over one another to get to the food.

Some never adapt to the pellets and die -- about 45% of deaths are from starvation. As fresh water becomes scarce on long voyages, salty water may be added, increasing as the journey lengthens.

It takes about three weeks by sea from Australia to the Mideast, so even on an uneventful trip, several hundred animals may die. In stressful conditions -- hot weather, a delayed sailing, rough seas, poor ventilation -- the numbers climb.

Last year, almost 15,000 animals died in a single month.

The corpses, like the animal wastes, generally are not disposed of until after the survivors have been unloaded.

Oh yes, the wastes. We don't want to get too graphic here, but Animals Australia, which opposes live animal exports, says each sheep produces about half a kilo a day -- multiplied by 50,000 or 100,000, remember -- which is allowed to build up through the voyage, until the animals and just about everything they touch is coated. Sometimes it's so thick the animals get stuck, immobilized by their own poop.

OK, that's enough of the revolting bits. Needless to say, animal rights advocates have a field day with these details, which they call "institutionalized cruelty," and it's hard not to sympathize with them.

They have been pressing the Australian government to ban the trade in live animals and restrict exports to frozen meat.

Unfortunately, many of the Arab countries don't want frozen meat.

Under the tradition of halal butchering methods, the animals have to have their throats slit while still alive, and usually without being stunned first, as is the practice elsewhere.

Saudi Arabia bought almost two million sheep from Australia last year. Demand is especially strong during the hajj, with some three million sheep being killed by religious pilgrims.

Despite the unsavoury details, Australia is keen to keep the business. It all but died in the early 1990s, when so many sheep were being shipped with scabby mouth that the Saudis rebelled and shipments were halted. They only began again in 2000, on the condition that no more than 5% of any shipment could have the disease.

The Cormo Express sheep missed the cutoff by one percentage point.

It's a bit suspicious that the gap is so thin and the Saudis won't allow a second opinion. But the record for the industry isn't that great either, so there is no particular reason to suspect either side is being less honest than the other. The Saudis, after all, need the sheep.

The real sticking point appears to be the tougher standards being adopted by countries that haven't previously been too fussed by issues such as hygiene or sanitation.

Maybe it says something that it's the Australians who are having a hard time adjusting to the tougher regime.