ALEC chief executive officer Alison Penfold said video footage of cattle being sledgehammered on ABC TV’s 7.30 Report story called into question the genuine individual efforts of to build trust in the regulatory process set up to protect the welfare of Australian cattle.

ESCAS was established following the devastating 2011 ban on live exporters to Indonesia and is designed to address animal welfare, ensure all livestock remain in the supply chain, provides traceability through the supply chain, and is subject to independent audits.

ESCAS has been heavily promoted as the cornerstone of the livestock export industry’s claim on expanding the live export industry.

However, sickening footage of what appear to be Australian cattle being sledgehammered in a non-ESCAS facility has again left the industry reeling and again opened a floodgate of complaint against the live export industry.   

“I watched the sledgehammer footage again last night as part of the 7.30 Report story,” Ms Penfold said.  

“No amount of times watching those animals suffer will lessen how sick and disgusting it is and makes me feel. I can only imagine how people watching it for the first time must have felt.

“The footage will call into question the genuine individual efforts of exporters over the past year to take actions to tighten supply chain controls and we have a lot of work to do to build trust in the regulatory process set up to protect the welfare of Australian cattle.

“Although we exported more than 300,000 cattle last year to Vietnam, it is individual facility failures which we must address if our industry is going to have any chance of regaining public confidence in live export trade to Vietnam.” 

Ms Penfold said in the wake of the Vietnam failures, Australian livestock exporters have agreed to implement additional measures, including permanent suspensions, to tighten Vietnam supply chain controls and improve compliance. 

“These commitments show we recognise that we need to engage with our stakeholders, including our harshest critics such as Animals Australia and the RSPCA, on the solutions to solve the complex challenges we face,” Ms Penfold said.

Ms Penfold also responded to suggestions that ALEC failed to act when Animals Australia presented footage of sledgehammering in 2015. 

“The footage shown to ALEC at a meeting on 27 May 2015 was of Thai bulls in a Vietnam facility,” Ms Penfold said. 

“The meeting came two months after I had already been publicly calling out the practice of sledgehammering and six weeks after the industry had initiated and announced actions to tighten control and traceability in the market to prevent leakage to unapproved facilities where sledgehammering is used.

“It was my error not to have provided a written response to Animals Australia at the time but it is wrong to suggest that the plan presented by them has not been considered by industry.”