Thousands of sheep and cattle remain stranded off the coast of Western Australia. There's been no decision on the fate of the ship which was ordered by the federal department of agriculture to abort its journey to the middle east 10 days ago. It is now anchored off the coast of Perth in a severe heatwave with nowhere to go.
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00:00 Trapped at sea.
00:04 The MV Bahija was expected to dock this morning but has spent another day out on open water.
00:12 These animals have already gone through 24 days at sea.
00:15 Potential heat stress, poor ventilation, standing in their own waste, they'd be extremely stressed.
00:21 The ship was ordered to turn around 10 days ago but has been without a plan since.
00:27 We've been asking state government, federal government what the plan is.
00:30 It appears at the moment there is no coherent plan.
00:33 We would certainly hope there is very quickly.
00:35 The Federal Department of Agriculture has declined to answer questions about the ship's
00:39 fate or the welfare of the animals on board.
00:43 While industry believes the ship is adequately equipped for the thousands of sheep and cattle,
00:48 they share in the frustration of being stuck in limbo.
00:52 To not come up with a plan over that period when the livestock were travelling back, that's
00:58 the frustrating part and still not having a plan now.
01:00 There's two options here, we can unload these livestock and either re-export or process
01:04 here or we can re-export them on the ship, the place that they were going to initially.
01:09 Fremantle's Labor Minister quick to jump to the department's defence.
01:13 This is a trade that over and over and over again has produced animal welfare atrocities.
01:18 A trade that has the mistreatment of animal welfare as part of its sort of week in, week
01:26 out practice.
01:27 I think it would be pretty rich for anyone to suggest that that's on the regulator.
01:30 The ABC has been unable to contact the MV Bahija's Israeli based exporter, despite multiple
01:36 attempts.
01:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]