Live sheep export by sea involves voyages of weeks that cause significant welfare harms including heat stress, disease, and mortality, driving campaigns for trade reform.
Live sheep export welfare harms are extensive and well-documented. The combination of crowding, unfamiliar environments, motion sickness, heat, and disease creates a prolonged welfare emergency lasting weeks. Animals that survive arrive at destinations exhausted, stressed, and vulnerable. The trade exists primarily because importing countries prefer live animals for religious slaughter requirements, but chilled meat exports can meet this demand with far lower welfare cost. Phase-out of live export in favor of chilled meat trade is the most significant welfare improvement available.