Live sheep export by sea causes significant, well-documented suffering from heat stress, disease, and injury during long voyages. Growing evidence supports replacing live trade with chilled and frozen meat exports.
Live sheep export has been the subject of sustained welfare campaigning because the welfare evidence is unambiguous and the scale enormous. Sheep confined at sea during summer voyages to the Middle East experience severe heat stress, respiratory disease from aerial ammonia, physical injury from crowding, and distress from confinement in an entirely alien environment. The industry's defence — that conditions have improved — acknowledges historical suffering without resolving the fundamental problem that intensive overcrowding on ships in hot weather is incompatible with acceptable sheep welfare. The economic case for transition to chilled meat export is now established; the remaining barriers are political and industry-structural.