A ship carrying 3,000 live cattle will leave Darwin sometime this week headed for Indonesia but there are fears of a bottleneck once the shipment arrives.
Elders is believed to be the only Australian exporter to hold a licence at the moment to export live animals after the Government enforced a full live cattle suspension in June over welfare fears.
The ban - enforced until safeguards were put in place which would ensure the proper treatment of the animals the Government said – has brought the cattle industry to its knees in some areas of Australia.
The ban was lifted on July 6 but exporters have been unable to send cattle for export.
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As agribusiness giant Elders prepared to send the first shipment of Australian cattle to Indonesia since the trade suspension was lifted, the lobby group which sparked the ban has launched a television campaign urging an end to live exports reports the West Australian.
The RSPCA and Animals Australia – who originally exposed animal brutality in Indonesian abattoirs – are releasing an ad calling for the trade to be banned.
The imminent despatch of a cattle shipment to Indonesia is an encouragement to the beleaguered northern Australian industry, but it will take much longer to fully restore the trade, the opposition has said.
Nationals leader Warren Truss, acting opposition leader until Tony Abbott returns to work later this week, said there was limited capacity to send large numbers of cattle to Indonesia in the weeks and months ahead.
"This is an encouragement to the northern Australian cattle trade but it is not the solution," he told reporters in Canberra.
"It's going to take quite some time to restore the trade and it's going to take quite some time to restore the confidence and the economies of northern Australia.
"Now the government may well have to take further interim action to assist the industry through this crisis."
Mr Truss said he believed the season was largely lost for many of the producers in northern Australia.
"Once the time passes the cattle will be over the weight the Indonesians will accept," he said.
"It is likely there will be a couple of hundred thousand head that were originally destined for the Indonesian market which will not ever be able to go to that country."
