ESCAS proves to be a toothless tiger, again
Recent graphic footage has put Australia’s live export trade back into the spotlight. Emmanuel Giuffre, Legal Counsel of animal protection institute Voiceless, argues that the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance Scheme (ESCAS) fails to protect Australian animals exported live.
Sadly, Australians are becoming accustomed to live export atrocities.
Since Four Corners exposed the shocking truth behind the fate of our animals in Indonesian abattoirs back in 2011, footage of live export cruelty has been beamed into our living rooms on a regular basis.
Examples of live export cruelty are too numerous to mention in detail, but particularly horrific examples include:
- in 2012, over 250 heavily pregnant Australian dairy cows being shipped to Qatar, with more than 60 dying of malnutrition and thirst as a result, calving within days of their arrival;
- in 2012, the death of more than 20,000 Australian sheep en route to Pakistan for breeding purposes, after the sheep were rejected by Bahraini authorities; and
- in 2013, footage of an Egyptian abattoir worker repeatedly stabbing an Australian bull with a knife, slashing at his tendons and face, until the bull eventually died in a pool of blood.
On 31 October 2013, more graphic footage has put the nation’s live export trade back into the spotlight. This time, Animals Australia footage has shown Australian sheep massacred on the streets of Jordan as part of the Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice).
The footage revealed Australian sheep being dragged along the street, thrown into car boots and having their throats hacked by untrained slaughterers. Boys can be seen throwing rocks at sheep laying on the ground as they are left twitching in the gutter.
In response, Minister for Agriculture Barnaby Joyce and Prime Minister Tony Abbott are playing the politics of appeasement – downplaying the incident and reassuring the Australian public that this is a “one off” incident, that tragedies of this nature are inevitable and not indicative of a failing system.
We beg to differ.
The Gillard Government introduced the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance Scheme (ESCAS) as a means of protecting animals along the supply chain. ESCAS sought to impose accountability on exporters and to effectively trace the welfare of animals from ‘paddock to plate’.
Most importantly, ESCAS was meant to resolve the obvious jurisdictional barriers that prevent the Australian Government from effectively imposing and enforcing Australian animal welfare standards on importing sovereign states.
What these live export incidents show, however, is that ESCAS has failed and will continue to fail to protect Australian animals exported live.
ESCAS imposes obligations on exporters, even though exporters have virtually no direct control over animals once they’ve left Australian shores.
ESCAS imposes minimum standards on importing countries – namely, the OIE standards – even though these standards are unenforceable and permit the slaughter of animals without pre-stunning.
And ESCAS provides the Department of Agriculture with the power to monitor and enforce against ESCAS breaches, even though the Department has failed to detect any breach of ESCAS and has failed to impose any criminal sanction on exporters found in violation of ESCAS since the scheme’s inception in 2012.
Incidents such as what we have just witnessed in Jordan reinforce the systematic inability of exporters and our government to monitor and control the welfare of Australian animals throughout the supply chain or to ensure basic minimum standards for animals overseas.
ESCAS is and will always be a toothless tiger, serving only to legitimise an inherently cruel and inhumane trade – a trade that is damaging Australia’s welfare credentials both at home and abroad.
New Zealand, a country comparable to Australia in terms of its distance from foreign trade partners, recognised the inherent cruelty in live animal exports and since 2007 has not exported slaughter or feeder animals alive.
Australia should follow New Zealand’s lead.
The vast majority of Australians now agree that the trade is indefensible, and like many such trades in human history, the only acceptable option for Prime Minister Abbott and Minister Joyce is to bring it to an immediate end.
Emmanuel Giuffre is Legal Counsel of Voiceless, the animal protection institute.
Katrina Love
November 5, 2013 at 7:58 am
Just a point of correction:
The 22,000 sheep aboard the Ocean Drover, who were rejected by Bahrain and ended up massacred in Pakistan were destined for slaughter, not breeding purposes.