Rescuers race to save 14k sheep on capsized cargo ship (opens in new tab)

That could be a possibility

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.

> 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

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

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.

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

They could import processed goods or simply go without them.

What are you talking about exactly? Are thousands of humans dying of heat stress due to spending weeks at sea in literally unbearable conditions? It's horrific.

Citation needed. Last time I tried to ship someone in a container I got 20 years.

Generally the journeys are much longer and in poorer conditions, with a lot less oversight.

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.

Shipping can refer to all three in this context.

I had assumed OP meant all methods of shipment.

Because of the extraordinary suffering it causes to animals. https://www.ciwf.org.uk/our-campaigns/live-animal-transport/

I’m undecided on this topic, but it’s an interesting test of imagination as to whether you could envisage animals before afforded the same rights as humans in the future. Certainly the direction of travel strengthens that proposition, and contemporary attitudes to slavery show just how wrong you can be simply by relying on the ethics in vogue during your lifetime.

loots of people attribute the same value to animals as they attribute to humans.

A life, is a life.

Also he did not say that they where the same, he implied they where comparable on some dimension.