THE Australian Livestock Exporters’ Council (ALEC) has today called for industry unity and demanded the Australian Meat Industry Employees’ Union (AMIEU) stop its misinformation campaign against the livestock export industry.
ALEC chief executive officer Lach MacKinnon said the AMIEU blamed the current sheep shortage on live exports without "looking at the facts".
“The AMIEU claims that 400,000 sheep transported from Tasmania went to the live export trade in 2009. Wrong. The 400,000 sheep were transported interstate as part of regular trading, the overwhelming majority of these sheep were processed in Victoria," Mr MacKinnon said.
“Sheep have not been exported from Tasmania since 2006, when only 70,000 head were shipped.
“In reality, Australia’s current sheep shortage is due to the depressed wool market and a decade of drought.
"Flock numbers have decreased by 37% over the past 10 years, and we are now sitting on the lowest flock size in a century – some 79 million.
“Live sheep export numbers are down one million head in the last financial year (2009/10) to a total of just 3 million head, simply because we didn’t have the numbers to meet demand from our overseas customers."
