Australian Meat Industry footage of Egyptian cattle cruelty revealed

Updated 2 hours 14 minutes ago

The ABC’s 7.30 has revealed the horrific footage of Australian cattle being mistreated in Egypt that led to the suspension of live exports to the country.

The footage, filmed by workers and given to Animals Australia by an Egyptian vet, comes two years after evidence of cruelty halted live cattle exports to Indonesia.

Egypt has vowed to investigate the footage, which led to the voluntary suspension of cattle exports and sparked calls for increased supervision of the slaughtering process.

In the footage, which was shot in October, an Australian bull appears to have a broken leg after escaping from the slaughter room into a holding pen.

A worker circles with a knife and repeatedly stabs at the bull, striking at its tendons and face.

Blood can be seen coming from the animal’s eye.

The worker is goaded on by a buyer waiting for the bull to be killed.

The whole tortuous process continues for five minutes, until eventually the bull collapses in a pool of its own blood.

Animals Australia campaign director Lyn White says the footage is horrifying.

“I think any person who watches that footage would be absolutely horrified at what that poor animal has had to endure in that Egyptian abattoir,” she said.

Another scene, also recorded in October by workers at an approved Australian abattoir at Sokhna, shows animals in a poorly-fitting restraint pen, which is turned over to leave the throat exposed for cutting.

Ms White says the restraint device would be extremely distressing for cattle.

“The footage of those restraint boxes reveals a device that tips the animal fully upside down, that has a head restraint which sometimes appears to be choking the animal,” she said.

“There could be nothing more terrifying or distressing than for cattle to go through that process. And then they have their throat cut whilst fully conscious.”

In the footage, one animal has had its throat cut incorrectly.

After being hoisted in the air and washed down, it then escapes from the hoist and walks around, throat gaping, until it is eventually brought down.

“They are not even checking that animals are dead before they start butchering them,” Ms White said.

“In that incident that poor animal obviously had such an awful throat cut that he didn’t even lose consciousness.

“Within minutes he is standing with a gaping throat dribbling blood until they start slashing at him and he collapses to the ground once again.”

Confidence in system

Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig has described the footage from Egypt as “sickening”, but says it is an isolated case.

He says he has “99.9 per cent” confidence that Australian animals will not be abused on their way to slaughter in other countries due to the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System (ESCAS).

ESCAS was set up by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry following the temporary shutdown of the live export trade to Indonesia in 2011.

“When you look around at the trade now from where it was – it was a deregulated industry where the community had very little confidence in the system, industry did not know precisely where animals went to nor did the community,” he told 7.30.

“Now we’ve got system in place which tracks and audits animals in overseas markets.

“It’s a once in a generation reform.”

Mr Ludwig says the Department is investigating the footage.

“What we have found is that we have had reports from Animals Australia of an incident in Egypt, we are investigating that,” he said.

“What the system allows is to find out what happened and move on.

“It’s very important we then ensure that these markets do meet the expectations.”

‘Send a message’

The footage was given to Animals Australia by Egyptian vet Dr Mahmoud Abdelwahab, who spoke to 7.30.

He says he wants the footage to put pressure on the Egyptian government.

“I wanted to send a message to the whole world, so I contacted Animals Australia and to take this footage and show it internationally and bring pressure to our government to improve its abattoirs, to make punishment (sic) for the killer, butcher,” he said.

He says killing animals in the way shown in the footage is contrary to Muslim beliefs.

“These animals have blood, have nerve, and have soul,” he said.

“So our God orders us to be nice with these animals, all of us to be nice to these animals. Prophet Mohammed wants us to be nice to these animals.”

Live trade suspended

The livestock industry has voluntarily suspended live exports to Egypt on Saturday in response to the footage.

But it is also struggling to explain how the abuse could happen at the very same facilities it has previously described as “state of the art”.

Australia’s Department of Agriculture says Egypt has agreed to investigate whether Australian cattle were abused at two of its abattoirs.

Australian Live Exporters’ Council chief executive Alison Penfold says a number of measures are being followed in Egypt, including bringing the country into the ESCAS.

“We are taking a number of additional measures, including taking a number of welfare officers into those facilities, providing additional trading in and support to ensure that all abattoir workers and feed handling workers are feeding and slaughtering animals in accordance with international animal welfare standards,” Ms Penfold said.

A live export promotion video, taken down from the web today, shows the same type of restraint boxes as the one seen to tip animals in the footage.

Ms Penfold now says they are unsuitable and were approved by the Government, not them.

“The head constraint was clearly malfunctioning – that’s obvious,” she said.

“In terms of the rest of the box I can’t comment. We weren’t involved in the auditing of the facilities or the approval of the facilities. That is taken place at a government level.

“We understand that that particular box is of European design – it’s certainly not a box we see in best case facilities, but again, the approval of that box and the auditing of it is a question that needs to be put to the appropriate authorities.”

Animals Australia wants the live export trade to Egypt to stop, a view shared by independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who says he will raise it in Parliament next week.

Source:  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-06/footage-of-egyptian-cattle-cruelty-emerges/4672890