THE Australian meatworkers union has formed an unlikely alliance with animal welfare groups to fight the live export trade, which they say is crippling the Australian meat-processing industry.
The Australian Meat Industry Employees Union said five abattoirs in regional Australia had shut down in the past six months due to a lack of animals, which were instead being sent overseas as live exports.
The industry's workforce had halved to 40,000 workers and lost 150 abattoirs in the past three decades, which union president Grant Courtney blamed on a live export trade that was unfairly subsidised by federal and state governments.
But Lach MacKinnon, chief executive of the Australian Livestock Exporters Council, said abattoir closures and job losses were the result of the global financial crisis and the rising Australian dollar. He denied that the live export industry received government assistance that created an uneven playing field for Australian abattoirs competing for stock.
''That is absolute rot of the highest order as we are not subsidised in any way, shape or form,'' Mr MacKinnon said.
Australia's live exports last year were worth $994 million.
The union yesterday joined forces with the World Society for the Protection of Animals to attack the Rudd Government for its support of the controversial live export trade.
''This has been targeted as an unholy alliance but these people are not the far-left greens who have climbed down from the rainforest and we all agree about changing live export policy,'' union president Grant Courtney said.
He criticised federal Minister for Agriculture Tony Burke for spending taxpayer money on improving animal welfare conditions in the Middle East, which he said should be a prerequisite before Australian animals were exported.
''Why should we be supporting these oil-rich countries in their animal welfare standards when they've got plenty of money?'' he said.
The minister was unavailable for comment yesterday.
WSPA program manager Emily Reeves said the federal government should halt the live export trade both to support Australian jobs and because of cruelty concerns about how they were handled during the journey and at their destinations.
She said a recent investigation in the Middle East had gathered video footage showing that cruelty and mishandling of Australian animals continued despite government and industry efforts to improve animal welfare in the region.
Meat and Livestock Australia's manager of livestock exports, Michael Finuchan, said such scenes were disappointing but said improvements were being made across the Middle East.
''We know predominantly most animals go through a supply chain we are comfortable with,'' he said.
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