Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is now some three weeks since the footage of horrendous treatment of Australian cattle in Indonesian slaughterhouses aired on Four Corners. While acknowledging the difficulties faced by producers as a result of the government's suspension of the live trade to Indonesia, it must be said that the abject failure of the industry representative bodies to ensure the most basic animal welfare standards left the minister no other choice. It is critical that, during any discussions related to the reopening of the trade with Indonesia, we do not forget the scale of the brutality we witnessed in the Indonesian slaughterhouses and that, currently, there is no enforcement of laws to prevent such treatment from recurring on a nightly basis. Indeed, I understand that no Australian officials are being allowed into Indonesian slaughterhouses at present, so there is no way of knowing what is happening inside.

Indonesian animal welfare groups have expressed the view that a majority of the 6.5 million Australian cattle exported to Indonesia over the past 18 years would have been subjected to some form of appalling and inhumane treatment. A recent report in the Jakarta Post quoted a slaughterhouse worker talking openly about routinely slashing the leg tendons to bring down cattle for the throat cut in a major Jakarta abattoir. In no way was he ashamed to admit this; it was just part of the business of slaughtering cattle—as is their traditional method of roping slaughter,which isa standard practice throughout Indonesia except in a small number of privately operated abattoirs.

It is apparent that the willingness of Australia's live export industry to supply cattle has reinforced local beliefs that such cruel practices are acceptable, and we now know that the restraint boxes Meat and Livestock Australia provided in fact facilitated the inhumane roping slaughter method. We know that, on viewing the operation of MLA's boxes, the world's leading slaughter expert, Professor Temple Grandin, was appalled and said, 'I think it is just disgusting that Meat and Livestock Australia is actually helping facilitate something like this' and that the mark 1 box 'violated every humane standard anywhere in the world'.

In the past week, another internationally renowned slaughter expert, Dr Mohan Raj, of Bristol University in the United Kingdom, wrote to Prime Minister Gillard in support of Professor Grandin's findings that the mark 1 box is inhumane and should never be used. Dr Mohan Raj is an expert adviser to the European Commission and on the working groups of the OIE, the World Organisation for Animal Health. In his letter to the Prime Minister, Dr Raj concluded that the slaughterhouses documented in the Animals Australia footage are 'in breach of even the minimum standards of animal welfare adopted by the 174 OIE member countries' and, further, that it is worth noting that the 'OIE codes are not intended as auditable standards or as best practice but as basic minimum standards for developing countries'.

It is these OIE codes that are being proposed as the basis for 'acceptable standards' for the reopening of the trade with Indonesia, and this is where I take issue with the motion moved by the member for Calare. OIE standards do not exclude the terrible roping slaughter techniques that we witnessed on Four Corners and they do not require the stunning of animals prior to slaughter. Cutting the throat of conscious cattle is brutal and barbaric and subjects them to unacceptable trauma and suffering. The entire live cattle trade to Egypt was stopped by the Australian government on the basis of the cutting of leg tendons of conscious animals. Why would we consider the cutting of the throat of a live animal any more acceptable?

Religious authorities in Indonesia accept pre-slaughter stunning of animals as part of halal slaughter. This is a significant breakthrough, and it begs the question of why we would undermine Indonesian attempts to improve the welfare of livestock during the slaughter process by setting a lesser standard, especially when stunning is the ethical and legal standard required by the Australian community for the slaughter of Australian cattle. What is more, I am informed by Paul Holmes a Court that major cattle producers, including AACO, Consolidated Pastoral Holdings and Heytesbury Holdings, as well as exporters Elders and Wellard and the Australia Live Export Council, all support mandatory stunning and independent monitoring in Indonesian slaughterhouses. Why would we not support the industry in its efforts to ensure sustainability and certainty?

The remarks of Jim Anderton, former New Zealand agriculture minister and former deputy prime minister, on ABC radio last Saturday are instructive. He said that New Zealand's decision to ban live exports in 2007 was a 'combination of concern for animal welfare and concern for the economic backlash that would occur if New Zealand's reputation was harmed by evidence of mistreatment'. It would be a mistake to think that the horrors of the Four Cornersreport will fade in the mind of the Australian community. Many Australians already want the live trade to end, so they will certainly not accept the trade reopening with Indonesia without confirmation that Australian cattle will be stunned while appropriately and humanely restrained in an upright position or without assurance that abattoirs will be regularly and independently audited and that a fully accountable and traceable system is in place. (Time expired)

See this speech in context