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 successfully 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 2016. The number of goats exported by sea fell substantially in 2008 and has stayed low, dropping to zero in 2016 with all goats travelling by air. Almost 80% of them were sent to Malaysia.

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 over a specified time and encourages continuous improvement.

Objective

This project provided data regarding sheep, cattle and goats exported live from Australia during 2016 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 2016:

• There were 1.78 million sheep exported by sea. Of these, 0.80% died during the voyages, which was an increase compared to the rate of 0.62% the previous year.

• There were 62,588 sheep exported by air. Of these, 0.02% died during the flights, which was lower than the rate of 0.24% the previous year.

• There were 1.13 million cattle exported by sea. Of these, 0.13% died during the voyages, which was an increase on the rate of 0.10% the previous year. There were zero fatalities on 31% of cattle voyages.

• There were 6,060 cattle exported by air. All were successfully delivered to their destinations.

• There were 53,959 goats exported by air. Of these, 0.041% died during flights, which was lower than the rate of 0.085% the previous year.

• There were no goats exported by sea in 2016.

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

Future research and recommendations

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

• It should continue to include a graph on ‘delivery success rates’ to show the percentage of cattle, sheep and goats successfully delivered to their destinations.

• Figures in tables should continue to be reported to two decimal places, to illustrate differences that may not be captured by one decimal place.

• Turkey and the Black Sea should continue to be reported as South-East Europe, as they are no longer minor, miscellaneous destinations.