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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-06-08 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

LIVE CATTLE EXPORTS

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (15:05): I see that the federal government today has introduced a temporary ban on the live export of cattle to Indonesia and I am pleased that this has happened. It is a week overdue. In fact I would have thought that this ban should not be necessary because the investigation that has been undertaken overseas into the slaughter of cattle is not something that is new to the knowledge of both the federal government and Meat and Livestock Australia.

As people know, before I came into this place, I was a veterinarian and not in my wildest dreams would I have thought that Australian cattle were being slaughtered in the way they are in Indonesia today. As a third-year vet student in 1980, I walked onto the floor of the Robb Jetty Abattoir in Western Australia very early one morning, and I saw a steer hung up by its back leg and its throat cut with a very long knife as part of halal slaughter.

I was shocked at that. That is no longer going on in Australia and I am very pleased at that. That should never have been allowed and should not be allowed to continue in any country in the world where Australian cattle are being exported. What we saw on television on Four Corners was completely unacceptable. Anybody who is complicit in any way with having allowed that to continue the way it has for many years now should hang their head in shame. In fact, they should resign.

We saw what happened in Egypt with animals being exported over there, and there are issues in the abattoirs there. We put in programs to educate and upgrade abattoir workers and their facilities over there, and conditions have improved significantly. I just hope that there is no way that Australian live exports of cattle, when they arrive in Egypt, are being handled in any way near what we saw in the footage in the Four Corners program the other day.

In the 2009 estimates questioning in the federal parliament, there was a question about the slaughter of live cattle in Jordan in 2006. At the Amman abattoir in Jordan, there was a device similar to what we saw in the footage on the ABC—a restraint box. I think it was a Mark I type restraint box and all it was doing was restraining the cattle which then could be tripped over to have their throats cut as part of halal killing.

Halal killing is not hacking away at an animal's throat. Halal killing involves one single clean cut across the throat to cut the oesophagus, the trachea, both jugular veins and both carotid arteries. There is a sudden drop in blood pressure. The animal is unconscious within a matter of seconds. It is not what we would like to see. We want to see the animals stunned first. What we have seen in the footage from Indonesia is absolutely atrocious.

What was asked about in the estimates hearings in February 2009 was the situation in Jordan in 2006. You would have thought then that the people in the MLA and the people in the department of agriculture would have said, 'Well, we better just check and see what is going on elsewhere.' I know some of my colleagues both in the federal government and other places do not agree with the ban on live cattle that has been put in place. Well, I certainly do. You cannot allow cattle to be exported and slaughtered under those circumstances.

The question put during federal estimates concerned the installation of the restraint box that was done in conjunction with the government, Australian industry, MLA and LiveCorp. You would have thought that MLA and LiveCorp would be watching this very carefully because, as they are getting $5 a head for every beast that is slaughtered in Australia, they should be making sure they are protecting the Australian industry, and I feel sorry for the producers who are suffering. A report was put out by the RSPCA in December 2010, I think, so it is at least six months old. It comments on a report that was produced by Schuster Consulting for Meat and Livestock Australia and LiveCorp. It was talking about the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra. This is about the export of cattle to Indonesia, about the 773,000 cattle that are exported to Indonesia.

We need to make sure that the slaughter of cattle overseas is done in a way that is restrained. What we need to do is make sure that our producers in Australia are not the victim of circumstances that have been allowed to come as a result of animal activists. This should have been looked at a long time ago. It should not be at this point where our producers are going to suffer as a result of other people's incompetence. Let us remember, the MLA directors are getting over half a million dollars a year in directors' fees.

The report to the RSPCA makes interesting reading. It condemns every aspect of the slaughter of cattle in Indonesia, apart from in a very few abattoirs. It talks about the tripping over of the cattle from these restraint boxes, the head slapping, the hacking at their throats and the complete inhumane slaughter of cattle. It is not recent. This has been going on for a long time. It has to stop and it has to stop now.

Time expired.

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