Wow is this industry desperate: trials to dehumidify ships so that they can resume a ME summer sheep trade!
The good news is that they finally get the fact that ship conditions are a major welfare condition that need to be addressed (after 40 years). The bad news is that the dehumidification trial is funded through an Australian Government grant of $2.2 million. What a waste of money.....If the ships can be dehumidifed, what happens then? Sheep conditioned to low WBT emerge in Qatar to be loaded into trucks in high WBT...and then off to high WBT in the feedlots. How are the industry going to address that? Dehumidify the trucks and the feedlots or perhaps just dehumidify the whole Middle East? If only the money had been used to really help primary producers transition and find new markets rather than just wasting more money on a dying trade.
1 Comment
Shirley Birney
26/7/2019 01:30:57 pm
MLA wrote that "Australian chilled carcase exports to Qatar expanded an additional 209,000 head over July–October 2018 – comparable to the size of the live trade over the period in recent years. The value of chilled and frozen sheepmeat exports in 2017–18 was A$3.28 billion (IHS Markit, Global Trade Atlas). The Middle East took 26.4% of Australia’s mutton and 26.9% of lamb meat." I understand that globally, Australian live sheep exports were valued at a pitiful $259 million in 2017–18.
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