Hugo Bombara, Boyup Brook
Dear Senator Varun Ghosh,
Congratulations on your recent appointment to the Australian Senate.
Nice to bump into you at a wedding last Saturday night. Thanks for the insightful questions. As acknowledged, it’s hard to put together one’s thoughts with Taylor Swift playing in the background. But as promised, here they are via email.
Reflections of a farmer on the ban of live sheep exports by sea.
It’s more complex than you think. The banning of the export of live sheep by sea, while looking deceptively simple, is actually vastly more complex and fraught. As a well read person you are no doubt aware of the complexity of the market and how it takes many interactions to create even the most humble of items. This is best explained by Milton Friedman in his two minute YouTube video “I pencil”. If you have not seen it, I recommend it to you, the take away being, our sheep are a critical cog in a vast interconnected network of people and businesses who all rely on the live export trade to make their living and put fresh meat on the table.
The Government statement
The following statement appeared on Federal Department websites early last year, it was used in the preamble to the enquiry announced by the Minister into the wind up of the trade.
“The Australian Federal Government has committed to phasing out live sheep exports from Australia by sea. The Federal Government has confirmed the phase out will not take place during this current term of the Australian Parliament.”
This statement, along with the announcement of the enquiry, caused a crisis in confidence amongst West Australian sheep producers. I can’t begin to explain the social cost and worry not to mention the economic cost this caused to me and other sheep producers.
What does it mean?
The first sentence commits the Australian Federal Government to phase out the trade, but the second sentence commits to not phasing out in the current term of parliament.
How does this parliament bind the next? The statements are contradictory, unless we’re expected to accept the logic twisting proposition that legislation, (if) passed in his term of parliament, is somehow not the first phase of the phase out.
Announcing an Australian Government commitment to a phase out, resulted in an historic liquidation of breeding stock, a collapse in prices and a vastly lower ewe mating.
Geopolitics
Upon hearing the announcement of the phase out, my first thought was our customers won’t allow the trade to stop with or without Australia’s involvement. I informally said this to Senator Brockman (WA), back in June last year at a meeting in Boyup Brook. If you look at the market for our sheep, it is obvious that the 400 million people across the Middle East and North Africa live in one of the most food insecure regions of the world.
You might recall, back in 2011 when global food prices suddenly rose, it caused riots in the streets of a number of these countries and some governments fell as a result.
These countries are ruled by our brothers in Abraham, they are made up of Islamic Kingdoms and the Emirates of the Persian Gulf, all run by serious men, living in a tough neighbourhood that is very culturally different to ours. The rulers, as you would expect, take their Kingdoms and the food security within, seriously.
The Australian Rules
The Australian rules around the live sheep trade as set by the 2012 ESCAS system had a positive impact on animal welfare standards in the countries where our livestock are processed.
But it’s not just the Australian sheep who receive the benefit of qualified vets and stock handlers who monitor and support feedlots, transport carriers and processors in these countries, but on all sheep that are transported by sea from the many different nations that are involved in the trade.
The regulators ensure that the Australian trade is not inherently cruel, unlike the claims made by the many activists that have influenced government to come to their decision to phase out the trade.
We are talking about a highly regulated industry, the best in the world. You can follow Mandy Matthews @rattle_ya_dags on X where Mandy shows sheep handling at the beginning, middle and end stage of voyages.
Banning the Australian live sheep trade is not “just another rule”, it’s the dissolution of all of the Australian rules and practices, and the ceding of the industry to other jurisdictions less interested in animal welfare than we are.
Process the sheep here
I’ve heard too may people casually dismiss, with a hand wave, the Middle East demand for live sheep. “Let them eat frozen meat (or 90 day old cryovac.)”.
They want fresh meat, just like Australians.
On the ground in Israel
A couple of months ago, I was sitting with Mr Mahmoud Dabbah, over a bbq at his feedlot in Israel. My two sons and I were talking about supply of a specific live sheep product with the cooperation of the existing shippers who will be engaged in due course. I asked Mahmoud where the sheep go, he told us they would be distributed throughout Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
We were there as farmers, just part of a long complex supply chain of buyers, shippers, exporters, transporters, feedlotters and Arab Israeli businessmen, all trying to keep the end customer in the street markets or supermarkets fed.
We also went to Tnuva, a large food processor that was originally run by a Kibbutz before expanding to become one of the biggest food operations in the Middle East. We met to discuss possible future supply of a select line of sheep for processing and asked what they needed and the peak times of the year for demand. They pointed to our older lamb and Israeli Independence Day, a day where a lamb bbq is the typical celebration.
We hope to visit Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in due course to explore what is a growing demand for Australian live sheep, contrary to the position put by the government that this is a dying trade that needs to be phased out.
Summary
Farmers support what is a well regulated industry, in fact it is a global leader in what it does, making a real difference to the standards of animal welfare for millions of sheep and cattle that are shipped around the globe.
Why would a well informed government end this trade. Where does the Australian Labor Party think it gets its moral authority to ban my peaceful and legitimate supply of live sheep to Dabbah and Tnuva? That to me, is by far, the most interesting question of all.
I hope you as a new Senator will take on board these comments and do what you can to support Western Australians.
Hugo Bombara,
Boyup Brook
Related story: Can this senator save live exports?
