farmer prepares to shoot 3000 cattle

What a waste...makes me hang my head in shame.



FED:WA farmer prepares to shoot 3000 cattle

CANBERRA, July 5 AAP - The federal coalition is warning of a
mental health crisis as one farmer prepares to shoot 3000 of his
cattle because of the live export ban to Indonesia.
Nico Botha, of Moola Bulla station in Western Australia, says
he'll start killing the animals as soon as Wednesday because he
can't afford to keep them alive.
"Rather than let them starve to death over two or three months,
I'm going to shoot them quickly," he told News Limited.
"My property is over-grazed and I have got too many cattle, I
have to look forward to the next year or two."
Nationals deputy leader Nigel Scullion, who's just returned from
a three-day visit to Indonesia to talk to industry figures, said
the suspension was turning deadly.
"These aren't mice or sheep, these are 400 or 300kg lumps of
dead cow," he told reporters in Canberra.
"You're doing 200 a day ... it beggars belief about the mental
impact on someone who's spent all this time growing these cattle,
nurturing these cattle."
Senator Scullion thinks the federal government will be spending
much more on mental health assistance for Australian farmers before
the issue is resolved.
"(It's) $120,000 a day worth of cattle he'll be shooting.
"This particular crisis is going to be a crisis in human terms.
"I don't know how (farmers) are going to recover from it now,
let alone how they're going to recover as the weeks roll out."
Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig cannot predict when live exports
to Indonesia will resume, with the suspension set to last anywhere
up to November.
Indonesia and Australia are yet to agree on mutual slaughter
standards which Senator Ludwig insists must be in place before
cattle can be shipped north again.
Opposition agriculture spokesman John Cobb, who was also in
Indonesia recently, said there is no reason to block cattle from
slaughterhouses that meet international standards.
"It's the Australian government's turn to make the next move,"
he said.
"There's a lot of cattle that are not going to find a home in
Indonesia before the wet season (and) a lot of them already would
have already gotten over the 350kg (limit).
"So it's a disaster now, whatever happens.
"The issue now facing the Gillard government and Senator Ludwig
is just how big that disaster is."
AAP cj/de/nb