With war raging in the Middle East, most Australians would assume that live export to the ME would grind to a halt. Not so - the Government regulator, DAFF, has obviously granted permission for sheep to go into the war zone. The MV Dareen was loading in Fremantle today before heading to Aqaba, Jordan (yes, the ship has to go through the Gulf of Aden, into the Red Sea, to end up in a port adjacent to Israel - see map below). 
Suffering on trucks before a a voyage into a war zone! 
May 2028 cannot come soon enough.
NOTE: footage from trucks to port today supplied to VALE and used with permission. 

Noticing that the voyage mortality rate was just below reportable on a short haul voyage (carrying tough northern cattle), VALE did the calcs on the IO Report for Balha One to Indonesia and sure enough, this voyage exceeded the acceptable average daily mortality rate of 0.025% (it is 0.059%). This should have triggered a "notifiable incident" investigation under ASEL but ...no.. it hasnt. Either DAFF has dropped the ball ...again...or they have carefully helped the exporters by removing this clause from the latest version of ASEL: ASEL v3.3 has point 5.6.5 j (pertaining to this issue in ASEL 3.0) with the word "deleted" alongside, albeit whilst still having maximum average daily mortality rate in the Table of notifiable criteria (Table 22). 

Regardless, the IO Summary is not adequate to explain a notifiable incident or a much higher than usual average daily mortality:
1. Given that it is likely that the ship carried young feeder cattle, there should not have been any need to treat cattle for ill-thrift - ill-thrifty cattle should not have been loaded.
2. Respiratory disease was cited as the main cause of death. BRD / pneumonia is a significant cause of death in mature cattle on long-haul voyages but these were young tough cattle on a short-haul voyage. 17/21 were apparently just ‘found dead’. Whilst early  signs of BRD are subtle, easily missed and can progress to death within 48 hours, in an outbreak, there should have been plenty of clinical cases showing the usual signs: lethargy, disinterest, standing with head lowered and neck extended, rapid shallow breathing progressing to laboured open mouth breathing, watery nasal and/or ocular discharge progressing to mucopurulent/purulent discharge with mortalities after a period of illness. BRD cases are not usually just found dead. The report mentions 28 treatments for respiratory disease but nothing further. More detail is needed - were the 21 cattle amongst the 28 treated? If so, how did they deteriorate so badly that they were "found dead" and not euthanased? So many questions and no answers in the IO Summary...and no notifiable incident logged. 

LiveCorp has an R&D tender out for a consultant to look at livestock vessel availability. This is clear indication that contrary to ALEC's claims, the industry is worried about lack of ships. 
Wonder if VALE should apply.....answers are pretty easy...
1. AMSA MO43 is the international gold standard and its is costly to comply with MO43, for both vessel design and maintenance. A ship with an AMSA ACCL (Australian Certificate for the Carriage of Livestock) has much higher operating costs than the rust-buckets that ply the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Red Sea and elsewhere. The only reason for having a ship with an ACCL is to operate out of Australia – and ship owners are reluctant to invest the tens of millions of dollars required to bring on-stream a vessel that meets AMSA requirements. The commercial risks for a big dollar, long-term investment in the industry are a significant barrier.
2. Regardless of the consultant’s report, if there is strong commercial demand for more AMSA accredited shipping then more shipping will emerge. Conversely, in the absence of strong commercial demand, the fleet will continue to contract. Its a pretty easy algorithm regardless of the consultant’s report.
Whoever lands this consultancy is getting money for jam. Why are livestock producers and Australian taxpayers co-funding this R&D report?

In January last year, ALEC actively promoted Morocco as a significant new live export market, expected to import 100,000 Australian sheep ‘as soon as possible’. VALE prepared a fact-check article which said live sheep exports to Morocco were unrealistic, based on distance to market, regulatory and commercial constraints and lack of shipping.
 
Mark Harvey-Sutton, CEO of ALEC rubbished VALE’s fact check (see:  https://www.sheepcentral.com/exporters-reject-claim-of-no-ships-for-moroccan-sheep-trade/ ). Harvey-Sutton said “While it was nice of them [VALE] to google shipping distances and livestock export numbers from Europe and send it to you, quite frankly they don’t have a clue about the likelihood of exports to Morocco commencing and I recommend you put it in the bin.”
 
So...one year on – there have not been any sheep exported to Morocco.
https://en.hespress.com/130277-morocco-has-not-imported-any-australian-sheep-despite-market-opening.html
https://en.yabiladi.com/articles/details/186503/despite-morocco-interest-australia-export.html
 
And the reasons Harvey-Sutton has given for no trade? Distance to market and commercial constraints. Who would have thought? Perhaps VALE has a better understanding of live sheep export markets than Harvey-Sutton does?

The LiveCorp R&D project on the Contribution of Livestock Exports to International Development Goals  is dated October 2025 and was released on the LiveCorp website on 17 January 2026. The Australian government matches LiveCorp R&D funding dollar for dollar. Why should Australian taxpayers pay for a project that is of no benefit to Australian producers or taxpayers?
 
The report itself has some good factual information, but of course leaves out critical information that is unfavourable to industry such as:

• There is mention of animal welfare enhancements after arrival, but no mention of animal welfare issues in transit to Kuwait.
• The report says there is no information available about ‘Waste reduction, responsible production and consumption’. A credible report would mention the carbon footprint and madness of ships taking slaughter sheep on a long-haul voyage, simply to have their heads cut off, before returning to Australia empty. Nor is there any mention of the thousands of tonnes of fodder (including human edible cereal grains and legumes) that is fed during the voyage, simply to keep the sheep alive, with the faecal pad washed overboard on the way back.
  
• The report talks about the importance of live exports for food security in Kuwait. Sounds good but is it? Bahrain has exactly the same food security concerns to Kuwait – a harsh environment completely unsuitable for livestock production. The key difference  is that Bahrain doesn’t have the oil revenue that Kuwait has. Bahrain switched from importing live sheep to importing chilled and frozen sheep meats long ago and has never looked back.

 So, same old industry spin, but paid for by taxpayers. 

In 40 degree Fremantle heat yesterday, cattle were loaded onto the Friesian Express. Sharp eyed vets partying in the harbour noted with concern that Friesian heifers among those onboard and sent video footage to VALE.
The problem - sure, loading in this heat was unacceptable but even worse, high producing dairy cows were never bred for the tropics. They suffer and then they die
So, why are we sending Friesian heifers to Indonesia to give milk to a country we are told has problems with refrigeration?
Answer: because farmers and exporters make money out of it.
Apart from small "boutique" operations using Jerseys, every time, Australia has attempted this it has been a failure as :
1) high producing dairy cows cant cope with the tropics
2) there is not actually enough high quality feed for high producing dairy cows in the tropics
3) there is no infrastructure to support dairy farmers start an extremely challenging animal production system in a developing country.
If we look at the last time, Australia did this - Wellard in Sri Lanka..it was an animal welfare and a social disaster - cattle died, farmers went broke. The fallout extended to banks and government. This will be no different.
See: https://www.sundaytimes.lk/250615/news/how-a-multimillion-dollar-loan-dairy-cow-bid-turned-sour-and-left-the-industry-high-and-dry-601443.html
See: https://www.wellard.com.au/wellard-to-make-changes-to-sri-lanka-dairy-program/ where Wellard laid the blame on the farmers.

Spiridon II  left Uruguay with 2901 cattle on board, about half of which were pregnant on September 20, 2025 and was then detained in Turkey from October 22 to November 14 2025. The veterinarian on board left the ship in Turkey. The ship then departed Turkey and after tracking around here there and everywhere often with AIS turned off, the  ship docked at Benghazi on November 22 in the afternoon and images show cattle trucks near the vessel. On November 24, it departed Benghazi with no more dead bodies on decks and also no more hay on deck. Presumably no animals left on the ship, either alive or dead....which is a relief for the cattle. Not so great for marine pollution as the sewage and dead carcasses had to go somewhere and the vessels route indicates that the "somewhere" was in the Mediterranean, a special area under MARPOL where carcass disposal is prohibited. 
For details of this disaster, read the AWF Press release here. 

Thought over breakfast:
In 2023, live sheep exports were valued at about $70 million, with nearly 671,000 sheep exported. In 2024, the value dropped to approximately $40.8 million, with only 423,300 sheep exported. 
AND...half a tonne of cocaine dropped off a single live export ship is worth $170 million on the street. 

Well it was no surprise, looking at the date of the drug bust and the photos of the ship involved but the livestock carrier at the centre of the drug bust has now been named by the ABC as the Al Kuwait.
Ironic that whilst VALE was writing to DAFF to alert them to biosecurity issues (confirmed by DAFF), the AFP were getting ready to go over the Al Kuwait for its role in drug dropping. 
Wonder if she'll risk returning to Australia .....could we have witnessed the last sheep ship just slinking off in shame never to return? One can only hope.