I think that it may be connected to halal restrictions. The ship was destined for Saudi Arabia, and the sheep would be slaughtered locally.

That could be a possibility

If not for global markets, my fresh fruit and vegetable selection would be VERY limited. As a kid, I had mostly root vegetables and apples from October until spring.

I have always wondered if we, as a species, are the problem. Maybe we’re really not supposed to spread and colonize every part of Earth. Maybe we’re supposed to stay within much narrower areas where the local produce is good enough.

Not sure if I’m making sense.

That's a very religious point of view. We are the problem, but only in that we're THE apex predator and we can't seem to figure out a way to control our worst consumption impulses.

One thing that struck me about a childhood visit to "St. Marie amongst the Hurons"[1] was that the Hurons would "use up" a place and simply abandon their longhouses and maize fields and move to a place with better hunting. Sometimes they would return a few years later to that same place after the prey populations had a chance to recover.

The echos of this world view is what freaks me out about people like Musk saying we need to get off Earth.

[1] http://www.saintemarieamongthehurons.on.ca/sm/en/Home/index....

"Our" reliance, in this case, is Saudi Arabia's. They live in a desert that won't produce enough sheep/meat for their pots.

In some senses, this is not new for the region. Meat was produced locally, but rice and wheat have been the main staples for thousands of years. They don't grow in deserts (before irrigation).

There are lots of very ancient cities in the deep deserts of the Middle East.. places that don't produce much food. Petra is a striking one. They've been eating store bought, imported food since before europe existed.

> In the 1970s, increasing incomes in urban areas stimulated the demand for meat and dairy products, but by the early 1980s government programs were only partially successful in increasing domestic production. Bedouin continued to raise a large number of sheep and goats. Payments for increased flocks, however, had not resulted in a proportionate increase of animals for slaughter. Some commercial feedlots for sheep and cattle had been established as well as a few modern ranches, but by the early 1980s, much of the meat consumed was imported. Although the meat supply was still largely imported in the early 1990s, domestic production of meat had grown by 33 percent between 1984 and 1990, from 101,000 tons to 134,000 tons. This increase, however, masked the dominant role of traditional farms in supplying meat. Although new projects accounted for some of the rapid growth during the 1980s, a sharp decline of roughly 74 percent in beef stock production by specialized projects during 1989 resulted in only a 15 percent fall in meat output. This reversal also highlighted the problems in introducing modern commercial livestock-rearing techniques to the Kingdom. [1]

Yes they don't have the capability to rear enough livestock so they have to import. Saudi Arabia existed before large scale imports like this, the problem is our (read: economically powerful countries) expectations are that we can get whatever we want whenever we want. When that happens tragedies like this occur.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Saudi_Arabia

> why 14,000 sheep needed to be transported

why not? if i sell my sheep and need to deliver them to the buyer, then i'll need a form of transport.

The pertinent question is "why live?" Live transports are (for example) the biggest animal welfare issue for kiwi sheep.

This might give some clue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhabihah

"The slaughter itself must be done by a sane (mentally competent) adult Muslim."

Halal abatoirs are the norm in most Sheep producing parts of Australia/NZ. This is far from unbridgeable.

The immediate reason for live exports now is there there's a premium on live sheep, often in the middle east.

Anyway, either the exporting or importing country can "ban" live shipping, so if origin and destination countries have different opinions that doesn't mean things can't change.

Obviously ban doesn't mean ban, just regulate to the point where transport-to-abatoir doesn't make sense. Obviously breeding stock and such will still travel.

I'm assuming because of the way an animal is sacrificed in order to be considered "halal". It would require a large slaughterhouse with the proper setup, which in an 98% orthodox country is not a easy arrangement.

About 25% of red meat exports from New Zealand are halal, and almost every slaughterhouse is capable of halal slaughter.

It's actually not particularly difficult to do halal slaughter, the two main requirements are that it is killed with a cut to the throat (common in non-halal slaughter) by a Muslim.

I'm not sure the muslim is a requirement per se, it's just that in practice there's an overseer. Many/most Muslim clerics accept kosher meat as halal, for example, even though the supervision is not necessarily Muslim.

Because of religious BS.

Nothing wrong with needing to transport but the problem is that globalisation has made it economically more viable to sell globally than locally. Produce should first be sourced locally then globally when they really need it.

> Produce should first be sourced locally then globally when they really need it.

global (aka long-distance) trade started around 3000 BC. it got a boom in 1815 due to mechanisation.

if you want to find out more, this is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade

As I've said elsewhere, I have no issue with global trade. What I have an issue with is our over-reliance on global trade.

right, why don't they flock them on their vast deserts

I see New Zealand lamb, frozen, in my Toronto supermarkets all the time ... they don't need to be alive.

and I see Argentinian meat sold fresh in Italy, plural of anectodes is still not data

That's not how that logical fallacy works and is also the Fallacy Fallacy[1]. An anecdote is absolutely proof that something is possible, just not that it's common or even statistically likely. Also, showing that something is an anecdote does not automatically invalidate the claim.

However, frozen meat exports from New Zealand alone is BILLIONS of dollars a year so I have no idea what point you are even making.

[1] https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy

you brought up frozen food, I was just stating the obvious, if they want fresh meat they have to import livestock.

but according to this community that's highly illogical, so go figure.

You are clearly highly emotional about this issue. I'm going to step out now.

You started crossing into personal attack already upthread, and here went over to the dark side. Can you please not do that, regardless of how emotional another commenter is or you feel they are? It degrades discussion and of course is against the site guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Message received.

They could import processed goods or simply go without them.

how dare them want to eat right?

What part about importing dead sheep instead of live sheep is the problem?

ah, the good old "I can't see why they doing it so they must be wrong" line of thinking.

dunno, on top of my head:

how much does shipping frozen good costs over short-medium distances?

how much does slaughtering cost in either countries?

how do you track if food was processed according to that market expectancy and codes?

why wendy is so big on touting his beef was never frozen?

and there's not even a general rule, shipping meat can be cost effective compared to animals depending on country of origin and destination, yet alone distances, i.e. https://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/wurpubs/fulltext/420339 and the result vary according to whether you're optimizing for cost or environment protection (and we know what companies tend to go for, right?)

Maybe we shouldn't optimize just for cost effectiveness if sentient beings are involved?

Yeah. The tl;dr here is really that some countries just don't care about animal welfare that much, or at all.

why is everyone so hellbent of depriving people from the taste of fresh meat? setting aside the specific requirement for processed food in these countries, why would you only want them to be served frozen products, if they can afford to foot the shipping costs? animal welfare is tangential and mostly impact on costs. I'm talking about availability, which people seem very keen of just removing because of perceived (and unsubstantiated) issues with livestock shipment.