W.LIV.0295-A review of shipboard mortality data 1988-2017

Summary

Australia’s livestock export industry has collected daily mortality summaries from voyages since 1988 and produced an annual report for industry. This data has now been aggregated into a modern, secure, web-based system – allowing a comprehensive analysis for the first time.

This project looked at 2,240 long-haul voyages (10 days or more) carrying cattle, sheep and/or goats from Australia from November 1988 to November 2017.

Objectives

The objectives of this project were to analyse data from long-haul livestock export voyages (ten days or more) from Australia between 1988 and 2017, and:

• summarise and describe route (origin and discharge ports), animal class, vessel and time of year
• describe mortality across years (particularly in consideration of timing of introduction of industry strategies to reduce mortality), routes (origin and discharge ports), animal classes, vessels and time of year
• identify risk factors for animal mortality.

Key findings

• Voyage mortality rates steadily declined for all species over their respective recording periods:
  • sheep from approximately 2.5% to 1% per voyage on average
  • cattle from approximately 0.7% to 0.3%on average
  • goats from above 2% to approximately 0.5% on average
  • high mortality voyages are now only sporadic.
• The vessel being used has less to do with the outcome than other characteristics such as species, the class of animals, port of origin and unloading, and time of year.
• Higher mortalities for sheep tended to occur during the northern summer period (June to October) on voyages to the Middle East and North Africa (the destination for 98% of sheep exports from 1988 to 2017). Mortality among cattle was largely independent of season.
• Modelling of environmental and climatic factors contributing to mortality identifies that a sea surface temperature threshold of above 25°C (consistent with ≈ 27–28°C threshold in wet bulb temperature) is associated with an elevated risk of mortality (which is not the same as an increase in mortality), particularly in sheep.

Benefits to industry

This analysis provides a better understanding of the livestock export industry’s performance over time, including risk factors for mortality.

Its conclusions provide direction for additional existing data which may be useful to integrate into the database and further measures to include going forward, to support an evidence-based approach to regulation and industry change.

MLA action

To ensure the linkage of the shipboard mortality database connects with the LIVEXCollect database. This will ensure the retrospective dataset is not lost and forgotten about.

Future research

Future work should further explore predictors of mortality that may be measured on a daily basis or incorporated from other sources, for use in real-time monitoring at individual animal level during livestock voyages to improve voyage outcomes. This will improve the capacity of shipboard managers to pre-emptively respond to changing conditions and prevent issues with animal welfare.

Additional data sources should also be incorporated into the shipboard mortality database to strengthen the quality and breadth of the data available for analysis.