Live cattle export ban: Have you really thought about all the consequences?

If you follow me on Facebook, Twitter or here on my blog, you'll know I'm having a hard time of late. My mental health is a little shaky to say the least. I haven't been posting as often, but I am still writing. I'm currently involved with a writing course which you'll hear about in a couple of months and I'm also keeping a detailed 'mood diary' for my psychiatrist.

I've been spending so much time over-analysing my moods that, quite frankly, I'm sick of myself. There are so many people out there in the world doing it a hell of a lot tougher than I am. I'm not going to take that away from my personal situation, because mine is a chemical one. I could have everything in the world going for me right now and still feel like shit. It's just my brain is playing tricks on me.

All that aside, I want to talk about something completely different to what I usually post about. This is a pretty emotive issue. There are a lot of opposing views out there but one side of the story is being heard much louder than the other side which I think is unfair.

I also want to say upfront, while my mood has been unstable, my ability to process rational thought and use critical thinking to write my arguments regarding this issue are still functioning. Any commenters that oppose my opinion and use my mental health issues as a means to ridicule me or this article will have their comments deleted immediately. If you don't agree with me, by all means tell me about your views, but keep my mental health condition and my opinion on this subject separate.

I have some pretty strong political views but I tend to stay away from writing about them on my blog because I don't want to be a target for trolls and I don't want to alienate any of my readers (ie lose one of the few of you). I've seen it happen to Woogsworld and Edenland (less in the form of lost readership, more in regards to vicious trolls).

Mrs Woog is pretty good at writing about the PM without giving away too much of who she'd actually vote for, but Eden on the other hand, lays her heart on the line and strongly aligns herself with the PM and her Government. That is her choice and I respect her for that because it takes huge balls to open yourself up to criticism on the level she received. And I'll keep reading her blog even though I don't agree with her politics.

Now, without any more beating around the bush (no pun intended), I want to talk about live animal exports. I know; it's a big, emotive subject!

I don't pretend to be an expert on this topic. I live in the CBD of Sydney and have grown up in the inner cities of Sydney and Melbourne and spent many years living in London. I'm a city chick through and through. But I have family from Far North Queensland who have been graziers there since the 1860s and I care about them.

I'm writing this post from my heart, from the information my FNQ family has given me and from what I've read around the interwebs.

All Aussies should care about our farmers that are doing it tough in Northern Australia suffering from both drought and the impact of the live animal export ban. Many of these families are still trying to rebuild after the destruction caused Cyclone Yasi. And now they can't sell their livestock to make the money they need to survive. Instead they spend their days rounding up dead or dying animals while the likes of Animals Australia and GetUp rake in the cash through donations from the misinformed city dwellers who want to punish them for trying to make an honest living and provide the beef that most of us enjoy.

While animal rights activists scream loudly about the disgusting treatment of a small number of our cattle exported live to foreign countries, what are they doing about the poor animals left here with nowhere to go?

Far North Queensland is suffering from a drought worse than that seen in 2007. Feed is scarce. With a huge glut in the beef cattle market what do you think happens to the animals not sold? They are left to die, that's what. A slow painful death out in the Australian outback unless the farmer can get to them in time to shoot them.

The graphic truth of cattle left to die in drought stricken Queensland. Image source.

No one likes to see what we've all seen happen to Aussie animals that have been exported live to places like Egypt, Indonesia and the Middle East and mistreated. The disgusting cruelty these mistreated animals have endured at the hands of these despicable human beings is to be abhorred. As a live animal exporting nation, I believe it is our government's responsibility to do all that it can to make the governments of the nations buying our animals guarantee that their abattoirs abide by the international regulations regarding to the humane slaughter of animals.

Of all the live animal exporting nations, Australia has the highest standards in animal transportation conditions. Animal hygiene is paramount and accredited export vets accompany each voyage to ensure animal health and safety.

The nations that buy our animals want them live for reasons we might not understand: for religious rituals or because of lack of refrigeration in poorer countries. Personally, I don't understand it but I'm an atheist and I have a fridge. Regardless, these countries want their meat live and if they don't get it from Australia, with all our strict regulations in place, then they are just going to get the animals from other countries that don't have those same rules and regulations and even more animals will be mistreated.

In the meantime, the ban on live exports means that hundreds of thousands of animals are dying slow and painful deaths here in Australia because they have nowhere to go, not enough rain and not enough feed.

The ban is hurting our farming communities that are already doing it so tough. The cattle industry in Northern Australia, most notably in the Northern Territory, accounts for an enormous number of jobs in regions where there is no alternative industry. In this article it is estimated that half of land in the Northern Territory and 20-30% of the pastoral leases in the Pilbara and Kimberley regions of Western Australia is owned by people from the indigenous community. The article also goes on to describe that "there is an entire transport, feeding, administration and shipping industry based on the trade" that has suffered enormously from the ban.

There was an article published on the front page of Saturday's Australian Newspaper that also tells of the slow demise of one of Australia's most successful indigenous pastoral operations, partly due to the live export ban.

But the mainstream media mostly continues to publish stories that are so biased against live exports. This article from the Sydney Morning Herald prompted my sister's mother in law to respond:

I'm hoping you might balance out your article on the 'live export artist' with the ensuing catastrophe caused by the cessation and disruption of live export. At present because of the resulting glut of cattle, compounded by drought, hundreds of thousands of cattle in northern Australia are facing a slow torturous death. Many are already dead. This is an animal and human welfare disaster of incredible proportions. Possibly the like of which we have never seen before. The vast majority of abattoirs do the right thing. In Indonesia there is oversight of abattoirs by Australian authorities but poor people will accept bribes to do the wrong thing. I know you are essentially a city based newspaper but you report on national issues and this is without doubt a national tragedy about which the majority of Australian are unaware. Government departments give out spin that they are offering this or that but it far too little and far too late. There is still a chance for some of these cattle to survive and be spared a long, lingering, horrific death.

   Sheena - retired grazier

So while everyone is enraged about the treatment of Aussie animals in abattoirs in other countries, by people who may or may not have been bribed by animal activists to make the situation look worse than what it is, who is doing anything to help the animals that are left here to die of starvation? Who is helping the farmers put meals on their tables at night? Who is helping to keep the indigenous community of Northern Australia working in their own businesses?

Where are the artists creating works that depict the pain and the heartache of the farmer who can't afford this month's debt repayments? Or of the cattle that can't get themselves up on their own four legs to walk to a water hole?

Why isn't the Sydney Morning Herald or The Age running those sorts of stories? And why isn't the ABC’s 4Corners program that launched the current publicity about cattle mistreatment in Indonesia now doing a program on the much greater devastation being suffered by cattle and cattle families as a result of the export ban and drought?

Have you really thought about all the consequences of the live cattle export ban?


V.

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