Proposed Australian National Standards for Animal Transport
Due to the size of this document, to enable easier navigation and fast page loading, the 'Standards' will be spread over several web pages as listed below;
Part A: General Standards - Page 1 | Page 2
Part B: Species Specific Standards - Buffalo | Camels | Cattle | Deer | Goats | Horses | Pigs | Poultry | Sheep
Alternatively, you may also choose to download the document in its entirety as a .pdf file from here
Make your submission to Animal Health Australia here
INTRODUCTION: At present the livestock industry is obliged to work with Codes of Practice for the transport of animals. These Codes are animal specific and guide all industry workers in how to comply with animal welfare legislation. Most States have Codes of Practice but unfortunately, they are voluntary and legally non enforceable. Most of the Codes are written in such as way as to be ambiguous and non prescriptive. This means that in a case of cruelty, a person might appear to have complied with the Code and this can be the basis of their defence. However, because the codes have no legal standing, even if a person accused of cruelty has not complied with the Code, a charge will not be successful unless the cruelty is blatantly obvious and clearly breaks the law.
BACKGROUND: In the light of the Codes’ obvious failures to ensure compliance to expected levels of welfare for animals and because they are unenforceable, Federal Government has decided to replace them with The Standards and Guidelines. The Standards will be legally binding and the Guidelines describe what is required in order to comply with the Standards. At face value, this is a valuable step forward for animal welfare. The problems lie in the fact that a great deal of the wording used in the Codes has been used in the Standards.
PREVENT SUFFERING AND CRUELTY: In order to achieve good outcomes for animal welfare and to ensure the effective and timely enforcement of the laws, the Standards must be explicit and comprehensive. It is important that both government and industry have a clear understanding of the intent of animal welfare Standards and as such, eliminate ambiguity and the resulting legal opportunism via “technicalities”. The Standards must be enforceable and any prosecution of cruelty based on the Standard should stand up in court. In Europe the animal welfare laws governing transport are specific and comprehensive. Violations incur penalties. In Australia it is not that simple and clear. The industry has largely contributed to the writing of the Standards and can be seen as biased toward the industry’s demands. The onus of proof of suffering and death is on the regulating authority, not on industry. The proposed Standards are for most part, ambiguous and will therefore make violations difficult to prosecute – there will be economic and political fallout when government officers are perceived as wasting time and money on prosecutions based on poor legislation against an industry intent on maintaining its hold on the status quo.
AMBIGUITY: Terms such as ‘competent’ and ‘effective’ used in the document are subjective and conditional, thus open to interpretation. If used, these terms must be quantified and defined. To illustrate the need for this, consider the following; In Australia there is no national training and accreditation scheme in place that instructs, assesses and gives qualifications to people within the livestock industry on how to handle animals humanely and with respect. At the moment, those involved in the industry can claim previous experience and might be accepted as ‘competent’, despite the fact that their previous experience might have involved ill- informed training and crude methods of handling. Furthermore, the person who assesses another’s level of ‘competency’ has never been ‘adequately’ trained and assessed and therefore is in no position to judge. Without national benchmarks and performance indicators in animal handling methods, it is not possible for anyone to judge “effective’, “competent” or even “qualified”.
An example from the Standards that describes “effective ventilation” further highlights the need for detail. Does ‘effective’ mean enough air so that the animal survives- gasping for breath, or does it mean the animal can breathe normally because the air flow is comparable to that of being in a pasture? If a truck was inspected and it was found that the animals were clearly stressed and debilitated from lack of air flow, would it be considered “effective” because the animals were still alive or would it be deemed “ineffective” because there is a case of animal neglect and cruelty?
The onus of proving suffering, therefore violation of a standard, is highly subjective and a legal minefield.
If there are no national standards, these terms must be defined and quantified in order for informed legal judgement to be made.
OUTCOME BASED: The animal welfare laws in Australia are ‘outcome based’. This means that the measures of success are based on mortalities after the fact and not that of preventing suffering.
NO PROACTIVE ENFORCEMENT: State Governments constantly fail to enforce their own animal welfare legislation. The failure goes beyond the poorly written and ambiguous legislation. The lack of funding to departments responsible for animal welfare results in understaffing and an acute lack of inspectors. Hundreds of thousands of animals – sheep, cattle, horses, camels, goats etc are being transported thousands of kilometres around the state and interstate over many days, without any ‘checks and balances’.
An interesting case in point is the West Australian government which increased its budget to the Animal Welfare Unit which provided a number of animal welfare inspectors. It seems highly coincidental that as the inspectors became more active and the department more successful, their budget was cut and the unit closed down.
Self regulation does not work and obviously the suffering and deaths of animals goes largely unreported by industry. In transport, the death of an animal can not necessarily be proven to be caused by the transport and suffering and deaths occur to the animals because the law does not at this stage, protect the animals.
ANIMAL REPRESENTATIVES: The process of review and development of the Australian Standards and Guidelines for the Welfare of Animals Land Transport of Livestock Public Consultation Version 29 February 2008’ has been going on for some months and representatives were invited from ‘stakeholders’ - over 30 people from industry or supporters of industry participated. Only 3 or 4 spokespeople from Animals Australia and RSPCA National representing animals were permitted to be involved – one would hope that for the sake of animal welfare, the value of the input didn’t depend on the number of voices or votes. Unfortunately, we believe it did.
We have provided rewording and an explanations of the standards which are the important sections of the document. Please make a submission using our comments as a guideline but we ask that you use your own words.
Don’t let the animals down. We are all they have.
"There are two types of cruelty that we see - covert and overt. Overt cruelty is where someone does something to an animal or a group of animals deliberately and with malice. Covert cruelty is the cruelty of denial, where over a long time an animal or group of animals is denied their needs, such as not being fed enough, watered enough or sheltered properly. There is more covert cruelty than overt cruelty nowadays."
Hugh Wirth:
Proposed Australian National Standards for Animal Transport
Part A: General Standards - Page 1 | Page 2
Part B: Species Specific Standards - Buffalo | Camels | Cattle | Deer | Goats | Horses | Pigs | Poultry | Sheep
Alternatively, you may also choose to download the document in its entirety as a .pdf file from here
Make your submission to Animal Health Australia here
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