Live shipping of sheep and beef out of Australia and New Zealand, especially to the Middle East, has been very controversial and banned on and off depending on the economy and political flavour of the month. It's a long, hot, hard journey, across the equator into the Middle East. There's no oversight on the ships, they get transported in horrible conditions, and the countries they're shipping the animals to don't have a great track record on animal cruelty.
Here's a case where 2,400 sheep died from heat stress on a voyage from Australia the Middle East: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/31/live-...
That's not an isolated incident either. It's endemic to live shipping. The whole reason they're doing it is because they want to maximise profits by shipping them live and slaughtering them in countries where it's cheaper, rather than using Australian abattoirs and shipping frozen carcasses or cuts.
There is bad ways and good ways to transport animals by road.
The "but its cruelty against animals so lets kill them instead!" card is a random and really worn out argument nowadays. We have enough of real problems yet.
Your suggestion gives your question the appearance of a not-so-honest question.
> What do you suggest then?
The answer would depend on your convictions. It could be one or a combination of, for example,
- Tight national and international regulations (with teeth) to ensure animal safety and well-being, comparable to the transport of humans,
- Local-only growth,
- Alternative protein start-ups,
- Etc.
> but its cruelty against animals so lets kill them instead!
I could not find any instances where the OP suggested this.
edit: Found someone else who mentioned that, which doesn't make sense to me either - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21637661
On the other hand,
> but its cruelty against animals
Then you would want to stop it in one way or another, no? What would be your suggestions?
All the language is also full of hyperbole ‘the terrible exhausting journey’, ‘their sad faces’, ‘the aggressive behavior of the truck driver’.
I just cannot watch this thing. These people instantly have an agenda to me.
They may be right, but there are enough terrible stories out there without any attempt to make it worse (as seen from some of the stories posted here).
Apparently sinking ships with live stock is not uncommon?