This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the performance of the livestock export industry in terms of mortality levels of sheep, cattle and goats exported by sea and air from Australia during 2015.  The report provides a breakdown of mortality trends by ship, species, time of year, load ports and major destinations.

The overall mortality rate for sheep during sea transport to all destinations during 2015 was 0.62% (12,560 mortalities in 2.01 million sheep exported). This was well below the 0.71% mortality rate for 2014 and represents a new record low. The main port of loading was Fremantle, which exported 1.80 million sheep with a mortality rate of 0.63% (11,256 mortalities), followed by Adelaide exporting 0.18 million sheep with a mortality rate of 0.60% (1,048 mortalities) and Portland which exported 0.04 million sheep with a mortality rate of 0.61% (256 mortalities).

The overall mortality rate for the record 1.31 million cattle exported from Australia in 2015 was 0.10% (1,355 mortalities). This was well below the mortality rate of 0.12% observed in 2014. The overall mortality rates on voyages to the Middle East/North Africa and North-East Asia were 0.25% (252 mortalities in 0.10 million cattle exported) and 0.08% (81 mortalities in 0.1 million cattle exported) respectively. The overall mortality rate on voyages to South-East Asia was 0.08% (804 mortalities in 1.07 million cattle exported), equalling that which was observed in 2014. The highest overall mortality rate on a regional basis was 0.53%, again for exports to South-East Europe (215 mortalities in 0.04 million cattle exported), while the lowest overall mortality rate was 0.07% for the three voyages representing Miscellaneous Destinations (3 mortalities in 4,500 cattle exported).

There were no mortalities among the 1,000 goats exported by sea from Australia in 2015. All goats exported by sea during 2015 went to South-East Asia.