LIVE EXPORT HAS NO FUTURE IN AN ANIMAL CRUELTY FREE WORLD

Australian cattle and sheep producers should have the ethical attitude that they have a big responsibility in ensuring that their industry is compliant with all laws pertaining to animal welfare. 

Not just up until their livestock exits their gate, but until it reaches their final destination, which definitely should be an abattoir which strictly adheres to a methodology of slaughter that ensures a humane as possible and dignified death for any animal. 

Which in a regulatory sense shouldn't be too hard at all to achieve, maintain and enforce by all state and territory governments - as far as abattoirs in Australia is concerned. 

But of course, the same laws, regulations and moral guideposts governing animal welfare in Australian based abattoirs go missing in action completely as soon as our cattle or sheep get loaded onto a live export ship.

Undoubtedly, activist group Animals Australia, which proudly advocates for the total abolition of live export, on occasions has been guilty of sensationalising relatively "minor examples" of animal welfare breaches on live export ships, for purely politically motivated reasons. 

But more often than not, calling it fairly and objectively, Animals Australia has got it spot on as to the "evils of the live export trade".

Prime example being the recent MV BAHIJAH live export ship to Israel fiasco. What happened to the cattle and sheep on board that ship, what they were subject to over many weeks, was completely unacceptable by any legitimate gauge of animal welfare under Australian law. 

The ship should have been turned around, after floating around in the Indian Ocean for weeks, and the cattle and sheep should have been returned to the Australian shore, for good.

Instead they finally ended up making it to Israel, to face a typically ghastly "live export demise". That's for the cows and sheep which survived the horrendous journey. 

Many hundreds perished. The thousands which did survive were slaughtered "fully conscious", in full inversion slaughter boxes. 

On a par with Satanic ritualism, that is no exaggeration. These slaughter boxes are considered to be so cruel to livestock that they are outlawed in Australia, the USA and UK. 

It's time for the Australian livestock industry to acknowledge the fact that the live export trade cannot be reformed or reshaped to address its most elemental failures of adhering to universal animal welfare standards.

By adopting an "onshore or nothing" position in regards to where our livestock ends up. In other words live export should not have a future - full stop.