Cows for Live Export 15,000 head

[grassguy]

Never say never, there have been a good number of shiploads of 650 weight steers come from Hawaii to Canada the last 15 years about. Seems to me there have been live lambs shipped from New Zealand to Oregon possibly also.

[cakadu]

Grassguy, lambs are indeed shipped live from Australia/New Zealand all over the globe. Many of them go to the middle eastern countries. Australia also ships live cattle as well.

I don't know how much of a problem that disease is on these ships, but if you do have a problem of some sort, you can have an absolute nightmare on your hands.

Witness the debacle in Australia last August/September when the Saudis I believe it was turned away a shipload of some 50,000 sheep because of a "problem" with what they termed blister mouth. Those poor sheep spent over 2 months on the ship because no one wanted them and after sitting in port for all that time, the Australians didn't want them back either. Last I heard about the saga, they were to be offloaded onto an island off the coast of Australia to see if any problems arose and then they were to be slaughtered.

Not a nice scenario at all.

[grassfarmer]

That is always the problem with live export, by sea particularily. The Australian exports of live sheep to the middle east were always in the news in Europe as they had a healthy following of sharks following the boats feeding on the deads tossed overboard - not an image the livestock industry wants to be associated with. I may be wrong but I believe that Australia exports live sheep but NZ ships only carcases.
We had a group called Farmers Ferry in Britain set up to truck lambs from Wales to Dover, across the English Channel and onwards to Spain and Portugal. This was a constant media disaster as unscrupulous traders cut corners and hauled for excessive periods without stopping and lost lots of lambs on the way - often videod by animal welfare people. I believe we must kill and process animals locally and ship carcases - although the northern part of the US obviously is within reasonable trucking distance if politics allow.