After the federal Opposition announced its intention to end the live sheep trade if elected, and with a private member's bill expected to be introduced after the budget is handed down today, Australia's $2 billion live export industry is in the firing line.

Farmers fear the immediate ban being called for by activist group Animals Australia could have a crippling impact on their businesses.

Amid the public debate, many commentators are quick to point out that Australia's closest neighbours phased out the practice with little fanfare 15 years ago following a similarly ill-fated Middle Eastern voyage.

So how accurate is this?

Why a country famous for sheep stopped exporting them

"It was pretty much the same situation as in Australia … horror stories of New Zealand sheep going to the Gulf and a lot of fatalities on board," New Zealand rural commentator Don Carson said.

"There were videos taken of the conditions that had public outrage as a result of it [and] effectively that was the end of the trade."

The linchpin for the 2003 New Zealand ban of the live sheep trade came after Saudi Arabia rejected a shipment of 57,000 sheep on board the MV Cormo Express.

New Zealand banned its live export trade after a shipment of sheep on the Cormo Express was rejected in 2003. ( Reuters: Stephanie McGehee )

After two months at sea and unable to find port, thousands of sheep died on board and the rest were gifted to the poor northern African nation Eritrea, where they were slaughtered in small makeshift abattoirs.

"I think we were doing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in exports back in the 1990s, then it really started to fall away naturally in the early 2000s," Radio New Zealand journalist Benedict Collins said.

"Then that Cormo Express incident was [the] final nail in the coffin."

The agriculture minister who extended the trade ban to include cattle four years later, the late Jim Anderton, told the ABC in 2011 he was not prepared to risk New Zealand's economy for such a small industry by playing "hard and fast" with animal welfare.

"Our dependence on agricultural exports is far greater than Australia. If we were going to get a backlash from countries or from industry from this … we are down the gurgler," he said.

Mr Carson, a former spokesman for the country's national farm lobby group Federated Farmers, said the changes under the country's Labour government — while not officially a ban — effectively served as one.

"It's not technically illegal, but a special dispensation has to be sought to get it [approval of the director-general of the Ministry for Primary Industries] and no one has really got that dispensation," he said.

While live export for slaughter has been banned, New Zealand still allows the export of animals for breeding purposes.

According to the Ministry of Primary Industries, in 2017 the country exported more than 8 million live animals overseas including 8.5 million day-old chicks (about 5.7 million of which are incubated eggs ready for hatching), 27,306 live cattle for breeding and more than 15,000 kilograms of bees.

Of this, just 123 head of sheep were exported from New Zealand throughout 2017.

By contrast, Livecorp, the Australian industry's peak research and development corporation, put Australia's total number of live sheep exports over the same period at just under 2 million.

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former Australian prime minister John Howard dealt with the fallout of the Cormo Express incident during their terms. ( AAP: Alan Porritt )

The Saudi Sheik, his sheep and a sunken trade deal

The fallout from New Zealand's sudden closure of the trade took an unexpected turn involving the owner of the Awassi Express — the ship at the centre of the current scandal.

Mr Collins, who has reported on the story at New Zealand's public broadcaster, said wealthy Saudi businessman Hmood Al-Khalaf held significant business interests in New Zealand and was breeding flocks for export when the legislation changed.

"[It has had] long-running implications for New Zealand in terms of us trying to get a free trade deal with the Gulf states," he said.

"[Sheik Hmood Al-Khalaf] was really unimpressed with the New Zealand government. He felt that they had given him misleading signals.

"We put the brakes on [live export] and basically he was, I believe, quite close to the agriculture minister in Saudi Arabia.

"Saudi Arabia said 'No way — we're not signing a free trade deal with you guys until you put things right with Hmood Al-Khalaf'."

Sorry, this video has expired On board the Al Messilah live export ship

According to Mr Collins, in recent years successive New Zealand governments have embarked on a project to appease Mr Al-Khalaf following the incident, dubbed in the media as the 'Saudi sheep scandal'.

It included building him an agrihub in the Saudi desert and an abattoir, along with a cash payment of $4 million.

The journalist said New Zealand, which still allows the live export of animals for breeding purposes, pushed animal welfare standards "to its limits" after airfreighting 900 heavily pregnant sheep to the sheik's farm in the Saudi desert, where upon arrival many of the lambs died.

"Despite our efforts not wanting to get caught up in animal welfare debacles aboard the live export ships, we ended up in one anyway, having flown them to the desert," Mr Collins said.

Despite ongoing efforts, New Zealand has yet to ratify the stalled trade agreement.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is conducting its own free-trade negotiations with the Gulf Cooperation Council, which would grant Australian exporters market access to six Gulf nations with a combined GDP of $1.6 trillion.

Australian sheep producers, who have been exporting animals to the Middle East since the 1970s, fear the country is not prepared for a trade ban. ( ABC Rural: Libby Price )

A tale of two countries

Mr Anderton told the ABC in 2011 that the country had not paid a price for doing away with what he described as the "appallingly bad" trade.

"You're exporting jobs at the same time and you're doing away with any possibility of high added-value processing, so it's a no-brainer," he said.

"As a country we wouldn't even think about it now."

One of the facets of the Australian live export debate is that Australia lacks the infrastructure to slaughter an extra 2 million head of sheep per year for the boxed meat trade.

Mr Carson, who managed a halal certification company in New Zealand, said that argument had not held weight across the Tasman.

"As the dairy land expanded at the expense of the hill country there were fewer and fewer sheep, so the history in the past 30 years of New Zealand is closing processing plants," he said.

"There is an over-capacity and that's one of our industry issues, so the argument certainly doesn't fly here in New Zealand that you can't get your stock processed so you have to export it."

Western Australia Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan has announced she intends to explore options to open more processing facilities in her state, where more than three quarters of the domestic trade originates.

Those plans have been met with opposition in Western Australia where, in contrast to New Zealand's dwindling industry of the 2000s, the live sheep export trade represents a third of the sheep and lamb offtake each year.

A Mecardo report commissioned by farm lobby group WAFarmers highlighted sheep prices could decline by up to 35 per cent in the export-focused state if a trade ban was implemented.

A group of cattle farmers launched a $600 million class action against the Government after live exports to Indonesia were banned by the Gillard administration in June 2011. ( ABC Kimberley: Lucy Martin )

Trade unlikely to reopen

Despite New Zealand farmers looking across the ditch with envy at prices in Australian saleyards, Mr Collins said it was unlikely the live export for slaughter trade would recommence.

"New Zealand farmers still would, I'm sure, like that option, but they're not prepared to take too much of a hit on the reputation," he said.

"It really is an archival sort of thing because towards the end of the trade … conditions on board those vessels were much better and the mortality rate was considerably lower as the trade ended.

"In fact the live exports for breeding that go to South America for instance have most recently had an even lower mortality rate than if those animals had stayed on the farm.

"I think the sticking point would be that we in New Zealand don't want to have the reputation of our animals unloaded at the other side, and then be seen on videos being inhumanely treated by those who choose to buy them."

The argument that livestock have lower mortality rates on ships does not sit with New Zealand animal rights group Save Animals From Exploitation (SAFE), who have partnered with Animals Australia to campaign for the end of all live exports.

"That's nonsense. The ship's journey is two to three weeks and they take the mortality rates on farms over an entire year," SAFE ambassador Hans Kriek said.

Mr Kriek said the organisation was opposed to live export of any farm animal for any purpose.

"You can't just measure animal welfare by mortality alone … the animals can still suffer considerably and still survive," he said.

"We definitely know that they are getting exported to countries where they will be slaughtered, sometimes without pre-stunning, which would be illegal in this country.

"So why would we send our animals to a country where they're going to be killed in a way that we wouldn't accept here?

"It makes no sense."

