The federal government says it is investigating whether cattle captured on camera being slaughtered with sledgehammers in Vietnam were Australian and how they ended up in non-approved abattoirs.
But it has ruled out suspending live animal exports to Vietnam, Australia’s second-largest export market after Indonesia.
Footage obtained by the activist group Animals Australia shows cattle being struck in the head to kill them.
The agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, said the allegations of mistreatment had emerged in March and the Department of Agriculture was investigating.
“We don’t condone this, we think it’s barbaric,” Joyce said. “These abattoirs are small family-run abattoirs, they are not part of a large commercial operation.”
The Vietnamese market is worth $120m, and 178,000 head of cattle were exported there in 2014. The use of sledgehammers is common in Vietnamese abattoirs, though the practice is banned for Australian-approved suppliers.
The chief scientist at the RSPCA, Bidda Jones, said more oversight was needed to ensure that Australian cattle remain in approved abattoirs.
“These cattle are being sold to other abattoirs. Some of them are being sold to China, so they’re going across the border,” she told ABC TV. “There’s massive competition in this market and unfortunately what seems to have happened is that … the exporter assurance supply system has been abandoned and exporters have really given up the idea of sticking to the rules in this market.”
Australia is the only one of the about 100 export countries to have an export supply chain assurance scheme to ensure animals being sent abroad for slaughter are treated in accordance with Australian standards.
The chief executive of Meat and Livestock Australia, Alison Penfold, said the live animal industry had put extra conditions on exports to Vietnam, including the use of CCTV in feedlots and abattoirs.
“That rollout is under way now,” Penfold said, adding that suppliers who failed to meet Australian standards “will face a suspension”.
Two importers have already been suspended from receiving further shipments.
The treasurer, Joe Hockey, said the government would not engage in a “kneejerk” reaction by suspending the trade to Vietnam altogether.
Tony Abbott said it would not make the mistake Labor had made in suspending exports to Indonesia after allegations of mistreatment emerged in 2013.
“We know that on the basis of a television program, a panicked Labor government closed down the live cattle export trade. It was a catastrophic decision,” the prime minister told reporters on Wednesday.
“It cost thousands of Australians their livelihoods, at least for a period. It badly damaged our relations with Indonesia.”
“So it was a crisis decision. Probably the most short-sighted blunder in Australian foreign policy in recent memory. We’re certainly not going to take the former government as our role model.”
Bill Shorten told reporters that Labor did not think that a blanket suspension was necessary in this instance.
“The minister should be auditing the market we are sending the cattle to, making sure we punish where we see these breaches,” the opposition leader said.
Shadow agriculture minister Joel Fitzgibbon has written to Joyce seeking a briefing on the latest allegations of mistreatment.
The independent senator Nick Xenophon wants an investigation into whether the system is broken.
“It beggars belief that, with the safeguards that were put in place, that this has happened,” he said. “Clearly something has gone wrong.”
Greens leader Richard Di Natale has urged that live exports be phased out in favour of a frozen packed meat trade.
“How many more [cases of mistreatment] are occurring out there that we don’t know about? We’ve got to basically move away from this trade, because the cost of this trade because the cost of this trade is the suffering and abuse of animals and it’s a price we should no longer be paying,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
