The Post

Tide goes out for animal exports

NZ does not want to be associated in internatio­nal markets with the mass death of animals at sea.

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Areview into the controvers­ial practice of live animal exports was already under way when the Gulf Livestock 1 sank in the East China Sea seven months ago. When the ship sailed from Napier three weeks earlier, there were 43 people on board and a cargo of 5867 cattle, headed for China, the destinatio­n of all our live cattle exports since 2017.

The horrifying impression of nearly 6000 helpless, drowned animals had a huge emotional impact in New Zealand. As one commentato­r put it, ‘‘The images of bloated dead cows floating in a turquoise sea are desperatel­y sad’’. Only two people survived. The New Zealanders aboard were not found.

Exports of live sheep for slaughter were banned in 2003 after the distressin­g story of the Cormo Express, when more than 57,000 Australian sheep were rejected by Saudi Arabia due to alleged infections, leading to the death of 6000 sheep onboard before the rest were eventually dumped in Eritrea.

Cattle were added to the ban four years later. Former agricultur­e minister Jim Anderton said he didn’t want to risk New Zealand’s economy by playing ‘‘hard and fast’’ with animal welfare.

The same politician once quoted philosophe­r Immanuel Kant on the subject: ‘‘He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.’’

Yet a loophole remained in which animals continued to be exported for breeding.

That loophole will close in 2023, so that the sector can wrap up any remaining contracts. The review that led to the ban announced yesterday was preceded by yet another tragedy, that of the death of hundreds of New Zealand and Australian cattle shipped to Sri Lanka in 2017.

Australia’s ABC network revealed that 500 out of 5000 exported cattle had died. To be fair, that is much higher than a death rate of two to five animals per 5000 exported, which was cited by David Hayman, spokesman for the Animal Genetics Trade Associatio­n, this week.

The Sri Lanka story came to wider attention in New Zealand thanks to animal rights activist group Safe. At the time, Agricultur­e Minister Damien O’Connor told Safe he had no plans to stop the export of breeding animals. Obviously, his views have changed in the past two years, and the Gulf Livestock 1 story must be central.

As well as being a moral issue in a world more concerned than ever with ethics, animal welfare is now a reputation­al issue. New Zealand does not want to be associated in internatio­nal markets with the mass deaths of animals at sea or under poor conditions overseas, no matter how statistica­lly rare such deaths may be.

O’Connor acknowledg­es this when he says we need to ‘‘stay ahead of the curve in a world where animal welfare is under increasing scrutiny’’, and the ban is about ‘‘protecting New Zealand’s reputation as the most ethical producer of food in the world’’.

Some farmers who already hold to animal welfare standards may see this as a triumph of image over reality, or even ‘‘virtue signalling’’, and they will point out, as Federated Farmers has, that standards and practices were overhauled after the Gulf Livestock 1 incident.

Yet even Federated Farmers concedes that, despite everything that can be done to improve welfare in New Zealand, after 30 days of monitoring at the other end, ‘‘New Zealand has no control over the future welfare of those animals’’. This ban is surely the right decision.

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