Kerre Woodham: Lambs to sacrifice

I love lambs. The spring arrival of soft, cuddly lambs bounding and skipping about the grassy fields fills my heart with joy. What is there not to love about these silly little pieces of fluffy white nonsense?

Yet, as a dyed-in-the-wool carnivore, my heart also fills with joy at the thought of those same little critters de-fleeced, carved up and roasting as a rack in my oven. Love it or eat it? Surely humans can do both.

As a meat eater, I've asked myself whether I'd be prepared to kill to get a steak on my plate. And the answer is yes. I would. I'd rather not, and right now, at this time, in this country, I don't have to, but if push came to shove and it was a choice between never sinking my fangs into a prime piece of animal rump again or killing the beast I was salivating over, I would kill it.

But I would rather animals lived and died in humane conditions. I've been inside a freezing works and although it was very raw, the animal's end was quick and efficient.

The cattle beast came up the ramp and emerged through the doorway; there was one heart-stopping moment where every dreadful suspicion it had ever harboured about the sounds and smells emerging from the great big shed across the way were realised.

Its eyes widened and the next thing - boomph. It had been stunned with an electric stun gun, flipped upside down, had its throat cut and down the chain it went.

It's not all that pleasant to watch and probably, for a brief 20 seconds, not all that pleasant to experience, but I hope my end is as quick.

I'd far rather that than linger in a hospital for months. I think if we enjoy eating meat, we have to ensure that we treat those lower on the food chain well, which is why I was most alarmed to see that live sheep exports look set to resume to Saudi Arabia.

TV3 reported this week that a Hawke's Bay sheep stud, controlled by Saudi interests, is breeding sheep specifically for export to the Middle East and that a lifting of the moratorium on live exports was imminent - June, according to Green MP Sue Kedgley.

The moratorium was put in place in 2004 after 5000 sheep died and 57,000 others were stranded on the Australian ship Cormo Express for more than two months when the ship was refused permission to unload in Saudi Arabia.

The horrific footage of the suffering animals was flashed around the world - and it wasn't just the footage from the ship that was sickening.

The fate of the sheep that made it to land is pretty bloody awful - they are sacrificed as part of the Haj ceremony and the images of live sheep being strapped to the roofs of trucks and having their legs broken to fit into the boots of cars before being taken off to have their throats slit was enough to make you think seriously about tofu.

Agriculture Minister David Carter is furious with the Greens because he says no agreement to export live animals has been reached with the Saudis and the Greens are just mischief-making.

He also points out that a vital part of his press release has been left out of most reporting - as well as the condition that strict animal welfare standards would have to be maintained, trade would be confined to commercial slaughter houses, so we wouldn't see animals being hauled off to meet their maker alive and kicking while trussed to the roof of a Japanese import.

Carter says Australia has resumed live exports and the animal rights people aren't jumping up and down about that, that a lot has been learned since the Cormo Express incident, and that there would be government-to-government assurances before live exports were permitted.

And on top of that, he says, the trade could be a nice little earner for our sheep breeders.

The Saudis may have a farm in Napier, and own the ship that would carry the sheep, but our sheep breeders could jump on the bandwagon to the tune of $800 million a year.

That may sound like a lot and I know it's a recession and every little bit helps but, really and truly, it's just a drop in the bucket in terms of export earnings.

So Carter was lovely and reasonable - when he spoke to me, it was in the same tones you'd use to soothe a flighty two-tooth ewe.

But really. Are things so tight in the farming sector that we'd be looking to get into a mucky, mucky business where the potential for PR disasters is so incredibly high?

You can demand all the assurances in the world - but once the ink is dry on the contract, everything's out of the Government's hands.

We've just had an agricultural Armageddon with Fonterra's foray into China and the fallout from that is still being felt. Are we really so keen to risk another? Besides, if the Buddhists are right and we come back as animals, would we really want to come back as a fattened up Awassi sheep on a slow boat to Saudi Arabia?

* www.kerrewoodham.com