Graphic footage of live cattle and sheep being slashed in Turkey slaughter houses was released in a push to ban live animal exports in Australia.
The video was released by animal protection organization Animals Australia as independent Andrew Wilkie's bill to phase out live exports and Green MP Adam Bandt's bill to immediately end the trade were voted down in parliament on August 18, according to ABC Australia.
Wilkie is currently working on a new bill that requires export countries to adhere to Australian slaughter standards, including stunning animals before slaughter.
"The live animal export trade or system is clearly broken, it's clearly unethical, it's clearly not in Australia's economic interest and we have to do something about it ... This is not the end of the matter as far as I'm concerned," he said.
The video shows conscious sheep being hoisted by their hind legs, dangling in the air before having their throats cut.
Other segments show live cattle being hoisted and having their throats slashed or stabbed.
International guidelines stipulate animals are not to be hoisted while conscious, according to The West Australian. Slaughterers must also be able to reach both sides of the animal's neck.
According to The Australian, Animals Australia campaign director Lyn White said she could not confirm the animals in the footage were Australian, but Australian livestock were regularly received by the two Turkish slaughterhouses, or "abattoirs," shown in the video, which was filmed in recent weeks.
Over 18 months, 397,917 sheep and 105,417 cattle have been exported from Australia to Turkey, The Australian reported.
"This is a routine method that occurred in nine of the 10 abattoirs that we visited," White said. "This absolutely breaches ... the international guidelines that the Department of Agriculture have said for years had to be the base-level standards for the importation of Australian livestock," White said, according to The Australian. "So it has to be asked why export permits have been provided to Turkey."
Animals Australia have already received a victory this year after they released a documentary showing cattle being whipped, beaten and slashed in Indonesian slaughterhouses. The footage led to Australia's federal government temporarily banning the $330 million live cattle trade to Indonesia on June 6, according to The Australian.
The ban was lifted a month later.
The BBC reported Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig was satisfied the exported animals would not be mistreated in Indonesia. He said ranchers were required to apply for permits that demonstrated they could meet animal welfare conditions under revised export control orders.
However, significant job and trade losses resulting from the ban has been at the center of a continuing Senate inquiry into the welfare standards in Australia's live export markets. In the Western Australian town of Broome this month the Senate discussed the impact to producers in the northern regions of Australia who would have "little to no future" if the country's live exports were banned, beefcentral.com reported.
Re-establishing slaughterhouses in northern Western Australia was argued by Senator Nick Xenophon, giving producers an alternative to sending cattle overseas. The state's Agriculture Minister Terry Redman rejected the idea "as financially unfeasible in the short to medium term," The West Australian reported.
“I want to see a long-term phasing out of this industry, but ... I don’t want an animal welfare crisis to turn into a human welfare crisis and that’s a real concern here,” Mr Xenophon said outside the Broome inquiry, The West Australian reported. “These producers look after animals well and have high standards in terms of animal welfare – they are not to blame for what happened overseas."
WATCH: GRAPHIC footage of sheep reportedly being slaughtered in a Bursa slaughterhouse.
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