Exposed! Australia's Cruel Live-Export Trade

In Egypt's Bassatin slaughterhouse, which the Australian live-export industry holds up as a model of how Australia's animals are treated in importing countries, we documented that workers were stabbing flailing, terrified cows in the eye and slashing their rear tendons in order to subdue them before slitting their throats.

Australia's sheep don't fare much better. In all instances, the sheep we saw were slaughtered by having their throats slit while they were still conscious, and they were left to thrash, struggle, and bleed out, usually in full view of other sheep who were about to experience the same fate. Some of the typical instances of cruel abuse and neglect that we documented include the following:

• In Oman—where the "flagship" of Australia's live-export fleet, the Becrux, had just unloaded thousands of Australian sheep—a flock of sheep was slaughtered by dragging the animals by their hind legs to a drain, using their back legs to flip them onto the ground, and crudely slitting their throats in full view of the remaining sheep. The sheep were piled together over a drain to bleed out and die. The sheep who had not yet had their throats slit were so terrified by what was happening around them that they tried to huddle with their dying flockmates, and the very last sheep to be slaughtered climbed onto the thrashing pile before a worker kicked him in the face to drive him toward the drain to be killed.
• In Oman and Egypt, sheep were subjected to stressful and painful handling practices. Sheep were roughly dragged by their hind legs from their holding pens, had three legs bound beneath them with twine, and were then tied to the flatbeds of trucks or crammed into car trunks for long, stifling drives to their final destinations.
  
  
  
  
  

» Read more about Australia's cruel live-export industry.

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