Australia halts live cattle exports

The Australian government suspended live cattle exports yesterday to 11 Indonesian abattoirs featured in a television programme showing suffering steers being whipped and taking minutes to bleed to death after their throats were cut. Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig said the suspension would be in force while an investigator reviewed the A$330 million (Dh1.28 billion) per year live cattle trade with Indonesia. Live Australian cattle account for up to 40 per cent of the beef eaten in Indonesia. Ludwig warned that more slaughterhouses could be added to the banned list. "I will appoint an independent reviewer to investigate the complete supply chain for live exports up to and including the point of slaughter," he said in a statement. A senior official at Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture, For Riwantoro, said that Indonesia as a predominantly Muslim nation has its own methods of slaughtering animals based on Islamic teachings. "We have to protect consumers by ensuring they consume not only healthy and clean meat, but most important, it must be halal," Riwantoro said, referring to Islamic requirements for slaughtering livestock. Use of stun guns While Australian abattoirs render cattle unconscious with stun guns before killing them, most in Indonesia follow the Islamic method of cutting the throats of conscious animals. The 11 abattoirs in Jakarta, Bogor, Bandar Lampung and Medan were selected at random in March and video recorded by Lyn White, a former police officer and campaign director of the animal welfare group Animals Australia. "We just stopped on the side of the road and asked people where their local abattoir was — it's as simple as that," White told The Associated Press. She did not expect the government investigation would find conditions any more humane at the vast majority of other Indonesians abattoirs. "There's about 770 [abattoirs] in Indonesia and only five stun, so only five would have remotely acceptable standards," White said. Animals Australia and the Australian Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, better known as the RSPCA, want the live cattle trade banned on cruelty grounds. Both cooperated with Australian Broadcasting Corp. to produce the gruesome television program screened nationally on Monday night. Riwantoro, who heads the agriculture ministry's livestock department, said Indonesia could look to countries other than Australia for imports of live cattle. "So far cattle imports from Australia supplement locally raised cattle, therefore such a suspension will motivate us to rely more on local cattle," he said. "Of course if the suspension continues, we will look for imports from other countries." Thomas Sembiring, chairman of Indonesia's Beef Importers Association, said live Australian cattle make up 35 per cent to 40 per cent of Indonesia's beef consumption annually. Shocking in extreme He urged Indonesian officials to make every effort to lobby the Australian government to lift the suspension. RSPCA chief scientist Bidda Jones, who analysed the video slaughter of 50 cattle, said the slaughter men used on average 11 cuts to the throat to kill each animal, and as many as 33. The Australian standard was death within 30 seconds. "They basically hack the heads off with blunt knifes, causing a lot of distress and pain," Jones said. Ludwig described the images as "shocking in the extreme".