Long Distance Transport in Australia

In Australia, approximately 970 million animals are transported in excess of 142 million kilometres per year, mostly by road, in all climatic regions, and extremes of weather.

Australia’s weather can range between snow and sweltering heat; with highway temperatures reaching 50º C plus (147 º F) in the summer months of December, January, February and March.

The majority of these sheep, cattle, goats, camels, brumbies and horses are destined to be slaughtered for Australian and global markets, or, with the exception of camels, brumbies and horses, exported live. All could be transported over distances of hundreds, if not thousands of kilometres before reaching their destination.

The transportation of these animals is governed by various federal and state legislatures, and voluntary industry ‘codes of practice’. These codes are the guidelines developed by the industry for complying with animal welfare legislation. The problem with that is that as long as claims of compliance can be used as a defence against charges of animal cruelty, there is no guarantee of prevention of cruelty.

Due to Australia’s critical lack of trained welfare inspectors to enforce welfare legislation compliance, inspections along the transport routes are all but non existent.

Australia asserts worldwide that they have the ‘best practice animal welfare standards in transport’ but the fact is that the livestock industry is largely left to self regulation and this remains just that - an assertion. Independent observation and monitoring by Animals Angels tell a different story.

January 2008 long distance trailing:

In January 2008 Animals’ Angels followed a transport of sheep from Western Australia to South Australia, a distance of over 2700 kms. The truck in which the animals were loaded did not have a ventilation or temperature control system and relied upon movement of the truck to keep the animals cool. The temperature during the 3 days varied between 24 and 38 degrees.

During this trailing the Western Australian driver checked only a small number of the animals- those on the lowest level of the truck- 3 times during a 20 hour driving period. The longest time between his checks was on day two, between 1.30am and 2.15pm – that’s 12 ¾ hours between his inspections.
Access to ‘downer’ animals remains unresolved; any severely distressed, injured or dying animals are not euthanised until unloading at destination.

The animals were not provided water or feed before and during the journey, which took over 54 hours.  Most of the sheep were denied feed and water for over 75 hours. Not surprisingly, some died enroute.
 
The delay between the arrival of one truck and collection by another at the WA/SA border, clearly indicated the lack of contingency plans to prevent delays and unnecessary suffering. This obviously compromises the welfare of the animals.

In this trailing, the water deprivation time was exceeded by over 28 hours.

Unlike the European Union, Australia’s animal welfare legislation and voluntary codes of practice are ‘outcome based’. This means that instead of providing prescriptive legislation to ensure prevention of suffering, we have a system in which the guidelines are often ambiguous and if complied with, might result in less 'suffering' – and that in itself is undefined.

It is accepted by various government bodies that there is a critical lack of monitoring within the livestock industry. The majority – if not all of both short and long distance transports are undertaken without checks by Animal Welfare General Inspectors for animal welfare compliance at any stage of the journey.

The current animal welfare laws, and CoP are obviously not working because of their ambiguity, lack of enforcement and we believe the lack of willingness to enforce.  In our opinion, the new proposed Standards and Guidelines for the transport of animals cannot succeed for the very same reasons.

As previously stated, animals are transported across vast distances and often from one state to the next, in harsh climatic conditions. It is common practice to use a solo driver for each journey, and because the solo driver must comply with rules of driving time and rest periods, this dramatically prolongs the water deprivation time for the animals in the truck .

To monitor compliance with both animal transport codes of practice recommendations, and driver workplace health and safety legislation, it is imperative that GPS tracking be implemented.

At the time of writing, Australia has developed a new set of national Land Transport Standards, which will possibly be adopted into legislation.  Within one of the recommendations, it is proposed that a 48 hour maximum water deprivation time be set for sheep and cattle transportation.

After the ‘proposed’ 48 hour water deprivation time has been reached, the animals would then need to be ‘spelled’; that is they are unloaded, rested, fed and watered for 36 hours. As such, to meet these legislative requirements, there are two possible options:

• Provision of ‘spell’ areas in either or both Western Australia and South Australia

• Use of dual drivers to share the journey, minimises compulsory driver rest stops, and thus reduces the overall water deprivation time.

Government funding to monitor and enforce compliance to legislation is insufficient because of the expectation that the industry is self-regulating. If that remains the official attitude, the industry should be made to take responsibility for and validation of their compliance by way of:

• Driver accreditation in the handling and care of specific animal species and,

• Knowledge and comprehension of all relevant legislations and CoP and,

• Vehicle permits to demonstrate compliance with specific animal species requirements and,

• GPS tracking to provide minimum records of compliance with animal transport times and work safety rest requirements as has been implemented in the EU.

 A centralised national registry should be established to record all long distance transports; driver accreditations and record of all complaints and charges; permits for interstate transport issued only to nationally accredited drivers; and nationally accredited trainers.  This would enable effective and measureable audits to be undertaken with the purpose of bringing certainty and high standards of animal welfare practises to the industry.