PETA thanks the Department of Agriculture!

Dear Editor,
 
The Agriculture Department deserves a vote of thanks from all Australians for its decision to suspend the licence of the largest live sheep exporter, Emanuel Exports.
 
Pictures of dead and dying heat-stressed sheep aboard the Awassi Express on a trip to the Middle East sparked public outrage earlier this year and led to a government inquiry into the trade. The Premier of Western Australia, from where the ship departed, described the behaviour of the export companies as "appalling". 
 
This was not an isolated incident. Every year, millions of Australian sheep and cows are sent on hellish journeys to Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and Agriculture Department figures indicate that more than 2.5 million animals have died on live-export ships before even reaching their destination, from heat stress or starvation, as they don't recognise the pellets they're given as food.
 
Nor is this suffering, either on the sea or at the destination, new. A joint investigation in 2006 by PETA and Animals Australia documented workers in an Egyptian slaughterhouse stabbing Australian cows, gouging their eyes out, and slashing their leg tendons. These tragic and unnecessary scenes occur with sickening regularity, one of the worst being the death of thousands of sheep, literally baked alive, on their way to the Middle East in 2013 on the Bader III.
 
This trade is only made financially possible by radically cutting all considerations of animal welfare. Not surprisingly, a veterinarian who worked on board these ships wrote in Sydney University journal Control and Therapy in 2014 that live export can never be humane.
 
The Department has taken worthwhile action in suspending the licence of the largest live exporter. Now it's more than time for the next step: to ban this vile trade for good.

Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
PO Box 2352
Byron Bay NSW 2481
0411 577 416
DesmondB@PETA.org.au