Australian activists seek ban on sheep exports to Qatar

Recent reports of over 4,000 Australian sheep dying while being transported by sea to the Qatar has led the country’s animal rights campaigners to call for a ban on all live exports.

Qatar, together with the UAE and other GCC states, are big importers of Australian sheep.

In Qatar, the government subsidises Australian sheep so the meat is available at a fixed price of QR14.50 per kg.

Australia’s Department of Agriculture has said some 4,200 sheep died last year due to heat stress on a ship bound for the UAE and Qatar. 

During the voyage in August-September, some 4,179 sheep of a total of 75,508 died midway.

Official estimates say 97 percent of the deaths were caused by heat stress. 

Weather conditions were extreme during the journey when temperatures might have reached 38 degrees Celsius.

Australia’s Labour MP, Kelvin Thomson, a critic of live animal exports, was quoted as saying that heat stress was a terrible way to die, with animals suffering convulsions and severe distress.

"If the heat stress was sufficient to kill 4,000 sheep it will also have caused pain and suffering for the other animals," he said.

The campaign director of Animals Australia, an animal rights watchdog, Lyn White, said the suffering of the animals was "too horrific even to imagine".

"In these temperatures, the ship could have turned into an oven, with these thousands of sheep literally baking alive," she said. 

White was quoted as saying that even supporters of the live export trade should reach the conclusion that animals should not be loaded into ships and sent into the extreme heat of a Middle Eastern summer.

Source: Brisbane Times | The Peninsula Photo: Jidhu Jose in the QL Flickr Group