Review of live sheep exports by sea to, or through, the Middle East during the Northern Hemisphere summer

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Public consultation on the review is now concluded.

How you had your say

The department has reviewed the effectiveness of new regulatory settings implemented in 2020 in protecting exported sheep from the risk of heat stress on voyages to, or through, the Middle East during the Northern Hemisphere summer.

We released a draft report for public consultation from 17 December 2021 to 28 January 2022. We received nearly 700 submissions. In March 2022 we undertook additional stakeholder engagement with animal welfare organisations, sheep producers, exporters and industry representatives, including meeting face-to-face with stakeholders in Western Australia.

We considered all information received during consultation when preparing the final report.

What we did

We considered an updated climatology analysis based on 42 years of accumulated climate data (from 1979-2021) from the Bureau of Meteorology, voyage reports from 15 voyages that occurred during the Northern Hemisphere summers from 2019 to 2021, scientific literature, an analysis of data from environmental data loggers placed on sheep decks and internal and external stakeholder feedback.

We then prepared a final report which was published on 16 September 2022. The Review of live sheep exported by sea to, or through, the Middle East during the Northern Hemisphere summer is now completed.

The review made recommendations to improve or maintain animal welfare, including the provision of additional fodder during voyages and the use of data loggers on the bridge of export vessels to record ambient wet bulb temperature.

The department will implement these recommendations.

Submissions

Submissions to the draft report, where permission to publish was provided, can be viewed on this webpage.

The department received a total of 681 discreet submissions directly related to the report.

  • 135 submissions were categorised as confidential or labelled to indicate they were not for publication by the submitters, and have not been published
  • 75 submissions were duplicate submissions by the same submitter or did not contain relevant content, and have not been published
  • The remaining 471 submissions provided the necessary permissions to be published. Most submitters indicated they wanted their submissions to be de-identified (names of individuals and contact/identifying details removed). This has been done.

For publication, submissions are numbered sequentially from 1 to 471. The allocated numbers have no significance other than assisting individual identification/referencing of each published submission.

Individual submissions

14 publishable submissions (#1-14) were received from organisations or members of parliament and have been published as individual documents. These submissions were received as PDF documents. They have not been converted to Word format, which may affect their accessibility.

General submissions

457 publishable submissions (#15-471) were from individuals. For these general submissions, the content has been copied and collated into 9 documents to facilitate publishing. Many of these submissions share identical or very similar content. The department has not grouped the general submissions by themes or similarity. They are numbered in the approximate sequence they were received through the Have Your Say portal and grouped as follows:

  • Submissions 15-39
  • Submissions 40-64
  • Submission 65-99
  • Submissions 100-152
  • Submissions 153-224
  • Submissions 225-295
  • Submissions 296-351
  • Submissions 352-432
  • Submissions 433-471

They are published in both Word and PDF format for accessibility.

Public consultation on the review is now concluded.

How you had your say

The department has reviewed the effectiveness of new regulatory settings implemented in 2020 in protecting exported sheep from the risk of heat stress on voyages to, or through, the Middle East during the Northern Hemisphere summer.

We released a draft report for public consultation from 17 December 2021 to 28 January 2022. We received nearly 700 submissions. In March 2022 we undertook additional stakeholder engagement with animal welfare organisations, sheep producers, exporters and industry representatives, including meeting face-to-face with stakeholders in Western Australia.

We considered all information received during consultation when preparing the final report.

What we did

We considered an updated climatology analysis based on 42 years of accumulated climate data (from 1979-2021) from the Bureau of Meteorology, voyage reports from 15 voyages that occurred during the Northern Hemisphere summers from 2019 to 2021, scientific literature, an analysis of data from environmental data loggers placed on sheep decks and internal and external stakeholder feedback.

We then prepared a final report which was published on 16 September 2022. The Review of live sheep exported by sea to, or through, the Middle East during the Northern Hemisphere summer is now completed.

The review made recommendations to improve or maintain animal welfare, including the provision of additional fodder during voyages and the use of data loggers on the bridge of export vessels to record ambient wet bulb temperature.

The department will implement these recommendations.

Submissions

Submissions to the draft report, where permission to publish was provided, can be viewed on this webpage.

The department received a total of 681 discreet submissions directly related to the report.

  • 135 submissions were categorised as confidential or labelled to indicate they were not for publication by the submitters, and have not been published
  • 75 submissions were duplicate submissions by the same submitter or did not contain relevant content, and have not been published
  • The remaining 471 submissions provided the necessary permissions to be published. Most submitters indicated they wanted their submissions to be de-identified (names of individuals and contact/identifying details removed). This has been done.

For publication, submissions are numbered sequentially from 1 to 471. The allocated numbers have no significance other than assisting individual identification/referencing of each published submission.

Individual submissions

14 publishable submissions (#1-14) were received from organisations or members of parliament and have been published as individual documents. These submissions were received as PDF documents. They have not been converted to Word format, which may affect their accessibility.

General submissions

457 publishable submissions (#15-471) were from individuals. For these general submissions, the content has been copied and collated into 9 documents to facilitate publishing. Many of these submissions share identical or very similar content. The department has not grouped the general submissions by themes or similarity. They are numbered in the approximate sequence they were received through the Have Your Say portal and grouped as follows:

  • Submissions 15-39
  • Submissions 40-64
  • Submission 65-99
  • Submissions 100-152
  • Submissions 153-224
  • Submissions 225-295
  • Submissions 296-351
  • Submissions 352-432
  • Submissions 433-471

They are published in both Word and PDF format for accessibility.