National livestock export industry sheep, cattle and goat transport performance report 2017

Summary

The Australian government, livestock industry (including producers and veterinarians), media, animal welfare groups and the general public have shown a keen interest in the care and welfare of sheep, cattle and goats being exported from Australia.

Each year, the Australian livestock export industry provides a breakdown of how many sheep, cattle and goats were exported, the month that shipments left Australia, and the sea ports or airports where livestock were loaded and unloaded. This includes details of how many animals were safely delivered and how many died along the way, but does not specify the cause of death.

This project summarised the performance of the Australian livestock export industry in 2017. The number of sheep exported by sea dropped by more than a third compared to the previous year, due to a moratorium on exports during the northern hemisphere summer.

The performance reports provide consistent, comparable data that can be matched against previous years. This acts as a gauge of how the Australian livestock export industry is performing and encourages continued improvement.

Objectives

This project provided data regarding sheep, cattle and goats exported live from Australia during 2017 by sea and air, including time of year, age and sex of the animals, and the number that died during export.

The collection of this information has enabled the long-term mapping of the Australian livestock export industry’s overall performance year on year.

Key findings

In 2017:

• There were 1.85 million sheep exported by sea. Of these, 0.71% died during the voyages, which was lower than 2016 (0.80%)
• There were 42,144 sheep exported by air. Of these, 0.04% died during the flights, which was slightly higher than 2016 (0.02%).
• There were 857,765 cattle exported by sea. Of these, 0.10% died during the voyages, which was a decrease on the rate of 0.13% the previous year.
• There were 9,261 cattle exported by air. All were successfully delivered to their destinations.
• There were 12,245 goats exported by air. Of these, 0.016% died during the flights, which was lower than the rate of 0.041% the previous year.
• There were no goats exported by sea during 2017.

Other key findings of interest include:

• The overall mortality rate for cattle during sea transport to all destinations during 2017 was 0.10% (867 mortalities in 0.86 million cattle exported). This was a 24% fall compared to the mortality rate of 0.13% observed in 2016, and represents a new record low. Cattle exports volumes also decreased 24% on 2016.
• Historical collection of data, via projects like this one, has shown there has been an overall drop in the mortalities of sheep involved in the live export trade. This has been attributed to a number of factors:
  • improvements in livestock care and management and ship design
  • a shift towards Australia exporting younger wethers (castrated male sheep) to meet customer needs in different overseas countries.

Benefits to industry

Ongoing analysis of the performance of the Australian livestock export industry, especially in areas of key interest such as the welfare of animals, provides valuable data that enables continued improvement in management practices.

MLA action

It is recommended that this project continue to be funded and reported on an annual basis in the future.