Animal welfare group lobbies for northern abattoir

An international animal welfare organisation is urging the Federal Government to help fund a meat processing facility in Northern Australia.

The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) has released a report that says 1,300 jobs could be created and $200 million injected into the economy of the north if a large meatworks is established.

The report says the figures are based on 400,000 cattle a year being slaughtered rather than exported to Indonesia.

WSPA says an abattoir would also more than double cattle producers' earnings before tax and interest.

The report says the uncertainty of live cattle exports to Indonesia and restricted beef quotas provide a strong incentive for processing rather than exporting.

Australia's largest cattle company, AACo, has plans to construct an $80 million processing plant south of Darwin.

The proposed facility could process about 180,000 cattle a year.

WSPA campaign manager Jodie Jankevics says the report provides a strong incentive to end the live cattle export trade without destroying an industry.

She says the organisation does not believe the live beast trade should continue.

"We believe it is really untenable," she said.

"But we really wanted to bring something to the table and propose a solution in terms of the alternatives.

"We were really pleased to find there are win, win opportunities."

Ms Jankevics says the society will be lobbying the Federal Government to support the report.

"We do see there is a role for government in the initial set-up, in terms of roads and other infrastructure that would support that abattoir," she said.

But Northern Territory Cattlemen's Association executive officer Luke Bowen says the WSPA report is inaccurate and naive at best to assume that live exports can be entirely replaced by a processing plant.

"It is a report that has been commissioned by groups with a very strong agenda, and an alliance with processors and unions, and vegan and vegetarian organisations, to discredit live exports," he said.

"It completely ignores the fundamentals of northern production systems into our international markets.

"Northern (meat) processing will only ever be complimentary to, not instead of, the live export industry."

Source: ABC News, 10 October 2012