National livestock export industry sheep, cattle and goat transport performance report 2019

Summary

The care and welfare of sheep, cattle and goats being exported from Australia is an extremely important focus of the live export industry. Each year, the Australian livestock export industry provides a detailed breakdown of all sheep, cattle and goats that were exported, which 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 during 2019 and provides the only comprehensive breakdown by species, ships, load ports and major destinations over the calendar year. Furthermore, the report provides consistent, comparable data that can be matched against previous years.

The number of sheep exported by sea has been trending down for the last ten years and in 2019 was approximately 30% of the total number exported in 2010. Goat exports were also depressed in 2019 – down 29% compared to 2018. Meantime, cattle exports increased by 16% on 2018 numbers.

Objectives

This project provided data regarding sheep, cattle and goats exported live from Australia during 2019 by sea and air, including time of year, age and sex of the animals, and the number that died during export.

Key findings

In 2019 there were:

• 1.08 million sheep exported by sea, of these, 0.26% died during the voyages, which was 42% lower than 2018 (0.46%)
• 41,505 sheep exported by air, of these, 0.01% died during the flights, which was lower than the previous year
• 1.29 million cattle exported by sea, of these, 0.11% died during the voyages, which was similar to 2018 (0.12%)
• 11,466 cattle exported by air – all were successfully delivered to their destinations
• no goats exported by sea
• 16,059 goats exported by air, of these, 0.03% died during the flights, which was lower than 2018 (0.05%).

Benefits to industry

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

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

The livestock export industry’s regulation is shifting emphasis from mortality (deaths) as a measure of performance to the recording and analysis of various animal welfare indicators.

It is therefore recommended that expression of results move from the rate of mortality to average values instead, with comparison made to standardised measures of performance in the trade for classes of animal, time of year, destination etc.

The use of standardised rates is intended to further clarify trends over time.