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Sheep ship sets sail towards Australia

October 17, 2003

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The sheep ship, which has been carrying more than 50,000 unwanted Australian sheep for more than two months, left Kuwait today headed for home, an official said.

"The ship set sail Thursday evening ... towards Australia," Nigel Brown, regional representative of Livestock Australia, told AFP.

Brown was still not certain what the final destination of the Dutch-owned Cormo Express would be though said he believed it would return to Australia, more than two months after it departed.

Some 5,368 of the sheep have died since then, mostly from heat stress, he said.

But Brown, who thanked Kuwaiti authorities for their assistance and allowing the ship to dock at Shuwaikh Port, insisted the sheep were "healthy and have no sign of any infectious disease".

"The ship has supplies of fodder, water and fuel, enough to take it back to Australia," he also said, adding that Canberra has not been successful in finding a buyer in the region for the remaining sheep.

About 30 countries rejected Australian government pleas to accept the 54,000 sheep still aboard the ship since Saudi Arabia refused to take them in August, claiming unacceptable levels of the disease scabby mouth.

Since then, the carrier has steamed around the Gulf, creating a public relations nightmare for Australia's $US690 million ($A1.01 billion) livestock export industry.

The Australian government argues that its only option is to bring the sheep back to Australia because slaughtering them at sea would be impractical and against international conventions.

But some government members have broken ranks and opposed their return, fearing their long exposure overseas means they could have picked up exotic diseases such as foot-and-mouth, threatening the entire $US7.6 billion ($A11.08 billion) meat industry.



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