The End Is in Sight for Australia's Live Sheep Export Trade

Something quiet but significant happened during this year's Festival of Sacrifice, the annual Islamic celebration observed by hundreds of millions of people around the world. Australian investigators from Animals Australia arrived at a slaughterhouse in Jordan, an Australian government-approved facility, and found something new. A solid wall had been built around the slaughter floor, with staff patrolling the perimeter.

They built a wall to stop the cameras.

It's a strange kind of progress. A live export company spent time and money physically altering their facility not to improve animal welfare, but to block documentation of it. And yet, in its own way, the wall is evidence that decades of advocacy have landed. They know the cameras come. They know the footage matters. That's why the wall exists.

But walls don't change the underlying story, and in 2026 that story is finally moving in the right direction.

The Numbers Tell It Plainly

When Animals Australia first began documenting the fate of Australian sheep during the Festival of Sacrifice in 2003, six million sheep were exported live from Australia each year. The conditions were, by all documented accounts, appalling, with animals suffering across hundreds of locations in multiple countries and virtually no oversight at the destination end.

Two decades of sustained advocacy, public pressure, and policy change later, the numbers look very different. By 2021, annual live sheep exports had fallen to around 553,000. By 2025, that figure was down again to 318,820. And this year, in the lead-up to one of the highest-demand periods in the live export calendar, just one vessel left Fremantle for Jordan in April. It carried 13,282 sheep.

From six million to thirteen thousand in a single shipment. That is a remarkable shift.

The Ban Is Legislated, But Read the Fine Print

The decline in numbers reflects something more durable than market trends: the Australian Parliament has passed laws to end live sheep exports by sea from 1 May 2028. Until that date, the export of live sheep by sea may continue under the Export Control Act 2020, with existing regulatory and animal welfare requirements remaining in place. A transition assistance package of almost $140 million is designed to help sheep producers, supply chain businesses and communities plan their way out of the trade.

This is the result of a process that began with an election commitment in 2019, was renewed in 2022, went through extensive public consultation including more than 800 written submissions and 3,300 survey responses, and was finally legislated in July 2024. Nearly 44,000 Australians signed a parliamentary petition in favour of a phase-out, one of the largest parliamentary e-petitions in Australian history.

However, it's important to be clear about what the ban does and doesn't cover. The legislation is specific to live sheep exports by sea. The export of cattle, goats, and other species will continue, as will the export of sheep by air. In 2023 alone, more than 676,000 cattle and around 18,000 goats, alpacas, buffalo, camels and llamas were exported live from Australia. The welfare concerns that have driven decades of campaigning do not disappear for those animals because a partial ban has been achieved.

Why "Nearly Done" Isn't "Done"

It would be easy to read the falling export numbers and the approaching ban date as a signal to relax. The arc is bending the right way. But there are good reasons to stay engaged until May 2028 and beyond.

Firstly, the trade continues. Every shipment that leaves between now and 2028 involves animals making multi-week sea voyages to countries where Australian welfare standards do not apply at the destination end. The wall in Jordan is a reminder that what happens after the gangway is lowered remains difficult to monitor and harder to control. The ban on the trade itself is the only mechanism that actually stops it.

Secondly, 2028 is still a way off and a lot can happen between now and then. Advocates including the RSPCA have called for continued community pressure to remind parliamentarians that this was the right decision, firmly backed by science and by the majority of Australians. Live sheep export has a long history of surviving political moments that looked like endings.

Thirdly, and most significantly, hundreds of thousands of cattle, goats and other animals will continue to be exported live from Australia after 2028, facing the same inherent welfare risks of long-haul sea transport and slaughter under conditions that fall well below Australian standards. As Animals Australia notes, while any animal continues to be exposed to the known risks of live export, the work is not finished.

What This Took

It's worth pausing on what produced this outcome, because it didn't happen by accident.

Two decades of field investigations, meticulously documented and made public, shifted what Australians understood about what happened to their sheep after export. The footage that emerged from various investigations, shown on national television and shared widely online, created a public that was no longer willing to accept assurances from industry that welfare standards were adequate.

The organisations that led this work demonstrated something important about how animal welfare reform actually happens. It requires sustained, long-term commitment. It requires evidence. It requires building public understanding that translates into political pressure. And it requires showing up, year after year, even when progress is slow and the walls keep going up.

None of that work is finished.

A Trade in Its Final Chapter

The trajectory is clear. A trade that once moved six million Australian sheep a year is now, in its final years, moving a fraction of that number, with a firm legislative end date on the horizon. The industry is transitioning. The policy is in place. The advocacy that made it possible has been some of the most sustained and effective animal welfare campaigning in Australian history.

The wall in Jordan is, in its own strange way, a sign of that. You don't build walls to hide things that aren't being watched.

Australia's live sheep export by sea is in its final chapter. The task now is making sure it stays that way, and that the same scrutiny is applied to every other animal still caught up in this trade.

The live sheep export ban comes into effect on 1 May 2028 under the Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Act 2024. We thank Animals Australia for their tireless work, and for continuing to monitor and document the trade until the ban takes effect and beyond.