Biggest export disaster since "Cormo Express"?

20 000 Australian sheep, shuttled from country to country are now all dead. The sheep were rejected from Bahrain and Kuwait, sent to Pakistan and feedlotted under apparently sub-optimal conditions. Approximately 9000 were subject to an initial brutal cull caught on video footage. That cull was halted by a Pakistani court injunction. The remaining 11000 sheep were to have been slaughtered at a Pakistani abattoir after being cleared of major infectious diseases by Pirbright Institute in the UK. However, Sindh authorities ignored the ruling, excluded the importer and Wellard staff and culled the remainder anyway. The killing was unsupervised and it is assumed that the second cull was no less brutal than the first.

The incident  comes at a time when “protection” of exported Australian animals is supposedly the best it has ever been. This incident has emphatically highlighted the fact that nothing can protect Australian animals once they leave Australia.