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After the shipment
had been rejected by a second unnamed country as wel l as by the
United Arab Emirates and Pakistan the SS Cormo Express was shipping
around the Persian Gulf while the owner and government officials were
negotiating
with 25 countries in the Middle East in order to find a
solution to the problem.
 In the meantime more and more protestors raised their voices because of
the unsatisfying and horrible situation on board of the SS Cormo
Express. Especially the animal liberation organisation RSPCA
complained about the bad conditions and claimed that already 6,000
sheep had died since the shipment had left Fremantle mainly due to
heat exhaustion because the temperature in the Persian Gulf is up to
50 degrees Celsius.
That’s the reason why the RSPCA, the meat industry and other
agricultural groups were in favour of killing the rest of the sheep
– on the high seas if necessary – to relieve them from their
misery and to guarantee that there wasn’t any risk for a
quarantine to be necessary.
It was of great importance to the animal liberation organisation
that the sheep were humanely euthanased by a team of vets and if
that couldn’t be secured they wanted the sheep to be returned to
Australia.
The opposite side represented by Kevin Sheill, chief executive of the
Livestock Export Corporation (Livecorp) was of the opinion that
putting the sheep down would be premature as negotiations with
another Middle East country were still going on.
In addition, Mr Sheill insisted that independent veterinaries had
confirmed that the sheep were under no serious health risk and that
the number of sheep which were infected with scabby mouth disease
was at five per cent.
On top of this is the fact that the scabby mouth disease is harmless to
humans.
That’s why Australia said that they hoped that the independent vet
report would convince Middle Eastern countries to reconsider their
rejection of the 50.000 sheep stranded in the Persian Gulf.
Finally the African nation of Eritrea announced that they would be
willing to take the thousands of u nwanted
sheep.
To show their gratitude, Australia gave Eritrea 3000 tons of fodder for
the sheep and 1 million dollar. Eritrea confirmed that the sheep
were in good health and would eventually be eaten.
Source:
http://www.amieu.asn.au/pages.php?recid=65
|Animal
groups condemn slaughter practices Sydney
Morning Herald - October 29, 2003|
by Sinah Behrends
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