Alliance against live animal exports
By Margaret Setter
An alliance between the Australasian Meat Employees Industrial Union (AMIEU) and Animal Liberation has been forged to fight for the abolition of the live cattle export trade to Asia and the Middle East.
According to the union, the government is using taxpayers' money to promote the trade through the foreign aid program.
The AMIEU called for help from animal welfare activists after Smorgon Consolidated Industries announced it had closed its Townsville abattoir, making almost 400 workers redundant. The union says the live export trade has grown from 147,000 head in 1993 to 290,000 head in 1994.
Australian cattle, exported live to be fed in Indonesian feed lots, are being used in the assistance program, which, according to the union, "amounts to using taxpayers' money to fund the export of our jobs, our knowledge, our expertise, as well as our cattle".
Australian meat workers, at a take-home pay as low as $275 per week, are appallingly paid. However, for men over 40, the closure of several northern Australian meat works means there is little prospect of alternative employment.
The live export trade is a violation of the basic welfare tenet that animals should be slaughtered as close as possible to the place where they have been reared, a principle that even as regards the domestic trade is often flouted.
Contrary to public perception, stock animals are specifically excluded from the provisions of anti-cruelty legislation. For example, in northern Australia each year about 250,000 heifers undergo the removal of their ovaries without anaesthetic, a painful and invasive operation which, if performed on domestic cats or dogs, would render the owner/operator liable to a stiff fine or jail sentence.