Risks To Our Industry -- April 2021

On the 14th of August 2020, Gulf Livestock 1 left the Port of Napier bound for China carrying 43 crew and 5,867 cattle. Seventeen days into its journey, after sailing into the path of a typhoon and losing power to its engine, Gulf Livestock 1 capsized with only one crew member surviving and all the animals on board perishing.

This tragedy spurred the Government to suspend live export shipments while a review was undertaken. Two months later shipments resumed but the writing was on the wall, public sentiment had been heavily against the practice for years, and last week the Government announced shipments of live animals would be phased out over two years’ time.

It doesn’t matter that the sinking of Gulf Livestock 1 was a maritime disaster unrelated to its cargo, the vessel had been flagged in both Indonesia and Australia for poor engine maintenance and improperly filed voyage plans, or that it was the only vessel to head directly into the typhoon while all the other ships in the vicinity sought shelter.

Nor does it matter what the conditions were like on-board more modern livestock carriers; how much feed is available; how many vets are on call or even if that the animals gain weight on their journey. What matters, especially to a Government that seems to have lost its way and is treading water on more pressing issues, is that banning live exports will make a lot more people happy than it annoys, and the people who do get annoyed by the ban probably weren’t going to vote for them in the first place.

Halting live exports has been Green Party policy for a very long time so it was inevitable a Labour Government would eventually enact it; after all it’s much easier to ban things than to actually do things and, providing our trading partners don’t take exception, there are no downsides.

Activities that we farmers undertake without second thought may in fact be very large risks to our industry, and the live export of animals was one such risk. If enough people object to a farming practice, regardless of the facts of the situation, we slowly begin to lose our social license to operate. We lose public support, and it becomes increasingly more attractive for the Government of the day to take action.

Objections to a particular activity don’t always come in the form of protests from people with a penchant for chaining themselves to trees, sometimes they come from a displaced people overseas lodging papers in our very own High Court. The Western Sahara Independence Movement are currently suing the New Zealand Superannuation Fund for investing in farms that are fertilised with what they claim is illegally mined phosphate, and before you dismiss this action you should know they’ve already had success in South African courts and stopped phosphate shipments from leaving port.

New Zealand has hardly covered itself in glory in the past when it comes to sourcing phosphate, today the Pacific island of Nauru is 80% barren wasteland as a result of phosphate mining and Ocean Island is in an even worse state, being left largely uninhabitable and most of the residents displaced to Fiji. Having completely depleted those sources we now import the essential mineral from the Western Sahara.

The Western Sahara was forcibly occupied by Morocco in 1975 and the ownership of the mineral rights are contested to this day. The occupiers are not internationally recognized and we remain the only Western country in the world that still allows imports from this region. I won’t make any predictions as to when we will join the rest of the world in an import ban, public awareness isn’t yet great enough for the Government to feel pressured into making a move. I sincerely hope both Ballance and Ravensdown are working hard on a Plan B.

Long before the Government moves on phosphate I suspect they will set their sights on palm kernel; the use of the supplementary feed is widely publicised and debated though I feel it is poorly understood. Banning its use would win almost universal public support despite the fact palm oil, the driver of plantation expansion in Indonesia, is in almost every product we consume. Trying to limit deforestation in Indonesia by banning palm kernel would be like trying to reduce beef consumption in New Zealand by banning leather sofas, though I suspect a leather sofa ban would upset significantly more people than one on palm kernel. Much like live exports, halting the use of palm kernel would allow people who are unaffected to feel good, and they by far outweigh the number of people who use the stuff.

Unfortunately, there is an issue at hand just as emotive as live exports and even more poorly understood than palm kernel; bobby calves.

For a cow to produce milk it must first become pregnant and bear a calf. About a quarter of the resulting calves are reared as replacements for the dairy herd and a good portion are sold to be reared for beef production. The remaining calves, some 1.8 million each year, are sent for slaughter in the first week of their lives.

An enormous amount of work has been done to ensure these calves’ welfare; from rearing to transport to slaughter, but an increasing portion of the public are finding the practice unpalatable.

The only reason I can think that it hasn’t been moved on sooner is there’s no easy solution. Simply banning the activity would only see the calves slaughtered on farm and requiring them to be reared for longer before transportation would probably see a similar result.

I have seen well-meaning people suggest the use of sexed semen as a way of eliminating bobby calves, but this just highlights the lingering misconception that bobbies are bull calves and only killed because they cannot produce milk, in fact a bobby calf is any calf that is surplus to requirements regardless of sex.

The use of sexed semen, which may ensure every calf born is a heifer, would just mean more of the surplus calves were female. We’re not in a position to rear more replacements, the Climate Change Commission makes that very clear, and exporting the extras to China is no longer an option.

Just because there are no easy solutions to issues like bobby calves or where we source our phosphate from doesn’t make them any less of a risk, and it would be far better if the farming community could come up with solutions before public pressure forced the Government to take action. After all, it’s much easier to ban things than to do things.