March 12, 2010

Australian meat and welfare groups form alliance against live exports

The Australian meat workers union has formed an unlikely alliance with animal welfare groups to fight the live export trade, which they say is crippling the meat processing industry.

The Australian Meat Industry Employees Union said five abattoirs in regional Australia had shut down in the past six months due to a lack of animals, which were instead being sent overseas as live exports.

The industry's workforce had halved to 40,000 workers and lost 150 abattoirs in the past three decades, which union president Grant Courtney blamed on a live export trade that was unfairly subsidised by federal and state governments.

But Lach MacKinnon, chief executive of the Australian Livestock Exporters Council, said abattoir closures and job losses were the result of the global financial crisis and the rising Australian dollar.

He denied that the live export industry received government assistance that created an uneven playing field for Australian abattoirs competing for stock.

WSPA program manager Emily Reeves said the federal government should halt the live export trade both to support Australian jobs and because of cruelty concerns about how they were handled during the journey and at their destinations.

She said a recent investigation in the Middle East had gathered video footage showing that cruelty and mishandling of Australian animals continued despite government and industry efforts to improve animal welfare in the region.

Meat and Livestock Australia's manager of livestock exports, Michael Finuchan, said such scenes were disappointing but said improvements were being made across the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Australia's live exports last year were worth US$994 million.