http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/Ed...A256DC20027E45BSheep of fools
The Bulletin
22 Oct 2003
By TONY WRIGHT.
The real story behind the Cormo Express fiasco is one of scabby business practices - not mouths.
The Koran (and the Bible) relate the story of God, or Allah, putting the Prophet Abraham to a terrible test – to sacrifice the life of his own son. As the child lay prostrate, waiting for the death stroke, Allah declared the test had been met, and allowed Abraham to slaughter a ram instead.
Thus, as the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, the Haj, draws to a close, there is a mass slaughter – millions of sheep, goats, cows and camels are killed in what is called the Eid-al-Adha, the feast of sacrifice that recalls Abraham’s moment of truth. Most are sheep, and according to halal requirement, each is lain on its left side facing the Holy Ka’aba, Mecca’s greatest shrine, before being dispatched by a single slash of the blade to the throat.
These days, the ritual around the holy city takes place in modern abattoirs, and the meat is chilled and packaged and distributed to the needy throughout the Islamic world.
More than 2 million Muslims make the pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia’s east, each year. Every person who owns property worth 400 grams of gold is required to purchase a sheep for slaughter.
The process is streamlined – the Islamic Development Bank handles the whole thing on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government and its agencies. Each pilgrim purchases a “sacrifice voucher”, paying 350 riyals ($135) for a sheep that will be slaughtered, but which the pilgrim will never see.
Many of these animals come from Australia aboard giant live-sheep ships. Last year, almost 2 million sheep were exported live from Australia to Saudi Arabia, and the year before the figure was more than 2 million. It is impossible to say how many of these animals were slaughtered specifically for the feast of sacrifice during the Haj.
However, it is likely the 57,000 sheep that left Fremantle, Western Australia, on August 6 this year aboard the MV Cormo Express were intended to end their days at Mecca.
Instead, they would become sacrificial lambs of an entirely different nature.
The precise reason for the unholy mess that has engulfed the Cormo and its cargo may never be revealed – to outsiders, Saudi Arabia can be glimpsed only through the most opaque screen. Its society, bound by intense secrecy and ancient tribal affiliations, fits well Winston Churchill’s description of the old Soviet Union: “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”.
As the Cormo sailed up the thin waterway of the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia’s western seaboard, bound for the port of Jeddah, one of those riddles was being enacted. It became obvious to the ship’s captain and crew that something was seriously wrong as the ship prepared to dock. There were no stevedores, no trucks and no activity that suggested any arrangements had been made to unload the sheep. Jeddah is only about 100km from Mecca, and normally there would be frantic activity on the wharf in preparation for the movement of the animals to feedlots where they would be kept until the Haj early next year.
Soon, three Saudi men purporting to be a veterinary team climbed aboard and made a cursory inspection of one of the 11 decks of sheep. Initially, they concluded that an astonishing 30% of the animals were suffering from scabby mouth – a condition similar to cold sores in humans, although it cannot be transmitted to humans through the consumption of meat. Mysteriously, this figure would drop to an official Saudi Arabian assessment of 6% as the ship sat, unloaded, over the next few days, and Australian officials argued the toss with the Saudi agriculture minister in the capital, Riyadh. The Australian veterinarian aboard the ship estimated that no more than 0.3% of the sheep suffered the condition, an assessment subsequently confirmed by an independent veterinary inspection and later by the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE).
The Saudi’s 6% estimate was to prove the genesis of a crisis. Australian sheep receive two vaccinations against scabby mouth before they leave the country, but because it is a live vaccine, there is potential for a small failure rate. Australian and Saudi authorities had concluded a protocol that allowed a tolerance of 5% infections. Beyond that, Saudi Arabia could legally reject a shipment – scabby mouth may not constitute a danger to public health, but sheep destined to become a sacrifice to Allah could not appear to be unclean.
And so, with Saudi authorities declaring that 6% of the sheep were contaminated, all the protestations of experienced vets from outside the kingdom were to be of no account. Some in the industry believe Australia made a tactical error by turning to the OIE – it drove the Saudis into a loss of face, and from that point, they would not budge.
Yet these sheep, bred especially in Western Australia for the Saudi market – ram lambs, wethers and ram hoggets, all with their tails on, as preferred by Middle Eastern consumers and sacrificers – were already owned by a Saudi Arabian importer. They had been purchased in Australia by the Hmood Alali Alkhalaf Trading and Transportation Company.
Right there, it appears, lies the problem. Hmood Alali Alkhalaf is an experienced livestock importer, but he operates out of the port of Damman, on the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia’s eastern seaboard. It is clear across the other side of the kingdom from Jeddah, across a score of old tribal divides. Hmood is a traditional Bedouin – though an extremely rich one – who prefers the feeling of the desert sand on his bare feet to the boardroom.
Those within the live sheep trade in Australia, including government officials, avoid discussing publicly their knowledge of the intrigue in which Saudi business operates. Privately, many believe that Hmood may have stepped on powerful toes by sending his sheep to Jeddah, or had not paid required “respect” to those who controlled the livestock trade in Saudi Arabia’s west. Immense sums are involved: about 20 million animals are imported each year from many countries by several competing operators. Hmood’s competitor in Australia is Al-Mukairish Australia, 100% owned by the giant Saudi Arabian joint operation, the Al-Mawashi Al-Mukairish United Co, whose share price was languishing at around 20 riyals until mid-August, when it rose to a high of around 44 riyals in mid-September. “It looks as if he [Hmood] pissed someone off,” one official told The Bulletin. Hmood’s shipment may also have sailed into a flooded market. Large numbers of fat-tailed sheep from Sudan have recently been arriving in Saudi Arabia after an outbreak of Rift River Fever had stopped the trade.
Former trade minister and deputy prime minister Tim Fischer made clear in a speech last week that he believed dark forces, right at the top of Saudi officialdom, were at work. The whole mess had been created through decisions “based on anything but quarantine”.
“It was a crass set of decisions by elements in Saudi Arabia for which one way or another they will be made to pay,” he said, but would not be drawn later on just what he meant. Hmood may have been taught a lesson in Jeddah, but he wasn’t going to be the one to pay – at least, not for this load of sheep. He wanted his money back.
The Australian vet on board the Cormo Express tried one last desperate attempt to persuade the Saudis to accept the sheep. He invited the Saudi vets to mark every sheep they claimed had scabby mouth, and offered to sail out of port, slaughter and dispose of all these sheep and return with those deemed healthy. The Saudis refused. It was obvious they wanted the whole shipment gone. The Australian government could do little. The sheep were owned by Hmood, who also had the rights over the charter of the Cormo Express, a Dutch ship operating under the flag of the Philippines. Then Hmood forced Australia’s hand. He ordered the ship to begin sailing back to Australia. It had limited fodder aboard, and the Australian government faced the alarming prospect of a shipload of tens of thousands of starving sheep sailing into its waters and anchoring off Fremantle.
With the vessel already 12 hours into its journey, the Australian government met Hmood’s high-stakes gamble. At 9pm on September 25, a fax flew from Canberra to Hmood’s Australian agent. The government would pay market value – $4.5m – for all 57,000 sheep that had left Fremantle a month and a half previously.
The next morning, Hmood’s agent accepted. And so began the saga of the sheep without a destination. British military commanders in southern Iraq initially agreed the sheep could be landed at the port of Um Qasar as a gift to the Iraqi people. But Iraqis had been watching their new television sets and believed they were being offered diseased sheep.
The British commanders then had a change of heart – it was all too difficult.
As Australia sought with increasing desperation a country willing to take its mutton on the hoof, it was flooded with commercial offers from businesses in at least 30 countries. But the Saudi government was busy using its commercial muscle to ensure that no country would issue an import permit – if Saudi Arabia had declared the sheep unfit, then it wanted no one else to do so. It would look silly.
Canberra ordered its diplomats to pull out all stops, but the answer was always the same – no one wanted to upset the Saudis, who suddenly began throwing trade deals to countries that appeared to be wavering. Both Kenya and Ethiopia were keen, but within a day or two of changing their minds, signed trade deals with the Saudis. Only one country offered to take the sheep: Afghanistan. But it was landlocked, and Pakistan (which has a big deal with Saudi Arabia for carcass meat) refused to allow the sheep to be transhipped. North Africa and the Mediterranean were impossible – Egypt refused to allow the ship to sail through the Suez Canal.
Last week, the Howard cabinet admitted defeat. The ship is now sailing back to where it began its journey to nowhere. When it anchors off the Cocos Islands, 10,000 blood samples will be taken from the sheep and flown to the Animal Health Laboratory at Geelong to ensure no transmittable disease has appeared during the long voyage. If no last-minute arrangement is made with another country, the sheep are then likely to end up on the slaughter floor of the huge abattoir at Albany, WA.
The live sheep trade with Saudi Arabia, which was recovering from six years without a single sheep leaving Australia for the kingdom during the 1990s (following earlier “scabby mouth” fiascos) is not expected to recover for many years, if at all. Next year’s feast of sacrifice during the Haj will have to look elsewhere for its sacrificial lambs.
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