Farmers unleash on Anthony Albanese’s government

Furious farmers say they have been ‘shocked’ by the Albanian government’s ban on live animal exports – and warn it could impact our food supply if farmers are driven from the land.

Although the full ban won’t come into effect until May 2028, farmers say it is already having a devastating economic impact on Western Australia’s regional economy and on the communities where the industry is largely located.

Many farmers have completely offloaded their herds as they prepare for the ban to come into effect.

“In terms of the number of sheep flooding the local market, this has had a huge impact,” sheep farmer Matt Kippen told Daily Mail Australia.

“Everyone thought it would start in four years when the ban actually went into effect, but it has been happening for at least two years.”

Mr Kippen, 29, who farms in WA’s Denbarker region, about four and a half hours from Perth, said he was forced to shoot about 350 lambs because market glut made it impossible to offload them and drought meant he had to buy food.

“It has been uneconomical to even retain breeding stock this year,” he said.

‘If there had been a market last summer I would certainly have offloaded the vast majority of my sheep, if not all of them.’

Despite the abundance of sheep, Kippen said consumers didn’t seem to be benefiting.

“The money goes somewhere, it doesn’t go into the farmer’s pocket,” he said.

‘It seems to be getting lost between the farmer and the supermarket, they still charge a lot for lamb.’

“Even if we put animals on the market, we’ll probably get half the price, if not a quarter, of the price we got three years ago.”

Mr Kippen said the ban threatened the future of family farms and had even considered selling themselves.

“It’s clear that as the younger generation takes over farms, it’s going to be a lot harder to make it a profitable and enjoyable business and lifestyle without livestock on the farms,” he said.

“The companies will be the only ones who can afford to land on such a large scale, so it will have disastrous consequences.

“It will lead to far fewer farmers, which will ultimately lead to the death of rural towns.”

He also said it could affect Australians’ diets.

“We want to produce the best quality food for the population, and not just for ourselves,” he said.

‘The vast majority eat meat and enjoy eating it. It becomes more expensive to make it profitable for the farmer.

“It’s going to be a huge reduction in a source of protein that people in the cities eat.”

Jess Grove, 29, who runs a mixed sheep and arable farm with their husband Alex, 30, in the mid-west farming region of north-western Australia, said the ban had been a huge financial blow.

‘We considered shooting sheep. It’s a big resort,” she said.

‘As sheep farmers we are concerned about the livestock and we don’t want to see the waste, so we are not there yet.’

The Dorper breed of sheep on the Groves’ farm is bred exclusively for the export of live meat, but when the Albanian government began to predict the ban on the export of live meat, the market for it collapsed.

‘Before the instability we sold between three and four thousand a year. We haven’t sold any in the last 18 months,” Ms Grove said.

Animal activists have long argued that the export of live sheep slaughtered according to religious rituals in countries such as Jordan and Kuwait is cruel.

But Keep the Sheep campaign co-ordinator Paul Brown said the live animal export ban was a “grubby maneuver to strengthen (Labour) preference deals with small political parties” and had nothing to do with animal welfare.

“The live sheep export industry and WA farmers are nothing more than innocent bystanders in a political drive-by shooting, where the Prime Minister’s aim was to grab the east coast seats he needs to keep himself in the top position,” said Mr. Brown.

‘They don’t call them floating feedlots for nothing. They get heavier. An animal in need does not gain weight, as every producer claims.

“There are concerns about the end result when they get there, but it is governed by the Australian board.

“I believe Australian live exports have improved animal welfare.”

“Currently, our industry meets and exceeds all standards and benchmarks required by the ministry.

In June, the government held a parliamentary inquiry in the House of Representatives into the proposed ban, but gave farmers and other industry players only a week to submit comments.

“I know so many producers who put entries on the website that never made it, including ours. They were never even read. It didn’t feel like it was based on any science or evidence.”

Mrs. Grove believed that some in the city had a very tainted view of agriculture.

“Seeing activists and their contempt and hatred for farmers is very disheartening,” she said.

‘I’m just a mother with two children and I love sheep. I see that it fits well in sustainable agriculture.

“They think we’re just here to hurt everything.

“That has to change somehow, but I don’t know how.”

The Albanian government has been contacted for comment.