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Descriptive summary tables were prepared in Microsoft Excel
®
and statistical analyses conducted using Stata
www.stata.com and the R software environment for statistical
computing www.r-project.org
. All analyses applied a significance threshold of alpha=0.05.
4 Results – Stage 1
4.1 General approach
There was extensive consultation and engagement with exporters and AAVs that both preceded the start of the project to ensure that the approach being put forward in this
project was feasible and that went on during the project as procedures were developed, tested and refined.
The focus was on those exporters and AAVs involved in exporting cattle on long-haul voyages from Fremantle.
The result of ongoing discussions was a paradigm shift in how research might be conducted on-board export voyages. The background and justification to this shift was discussed in
detail in the final report for the scoping project B.LIV.0248 that preceded the initiation of this project. A brief summary of the issue is provided here.
Previous projects investigating causes of mortality during export voyages in sheep W.LIVE.123 and cattle
9
, had involved research team members being placed in export assembly depots and on-board export ships purely for the purposes of investigating sick and
dead animals and collecting data and information for the research project. Resource constraints meant that it was only possible to do this for a small number of voyages, four in
the case of the previous cattle research project.
At the time the current project was being considered, most long haul cattle export voyages were reporting relatively low mortality rates, and there were sporadic individual voyages that
reported mortality rates that exceeded the regulated mortality reporting threshold. If a conventional research project was implemented with research team members placed on a
small number of voyages, there was a very high likelihood that this might result in collection of limited data on causes of mortality and that it might not provide any useful information on
possible causal factors for major causes of mortality simply because of the limited number of mortality cases.
Two alternative approaches were then considered for the current project. The first involved expanding a conventional research approach to a larger number of voyages by increasing
the size of the research team and running the project for a longer period. This approach was considered non-feasible because of costs and because of difficulties in ensuring research
personnel for a prolonged period of time to accompany voyages that are often arranged over a relatively short and unpredictable time frame.
The final alternative was to use a different approach based on using existing industry personnel principally AAVs as the primary source for recording observations and collecting
samples during export voyages. This approach would potentially allow all eligible voyages to
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be enrolled in the project and would result in much larger sample sizes and more efficient data collection. This approach then formed the basis of the current project.
Our approach was based on enrolling commercial voyages by seeking commitment and participation from exporters and in particular their support for then asking AAVs to collect
information and biological samples from dead cattle and information about cattle health in general during the voyage.
The project team would then provide support and resource material to AAVs to make sure that tasks they were asked to perform for the research project were simple and easy to do
and would not interfere with the tasks they were being asked to do as part of their routine commercial role during the voyage.
There was a clear recognition that research procedures would need to be streamlined and simplified. If AAVs or exporters felt that the research demands on AAV time during a voyage
were excessive and interfered with the ability of an AAV to perform their routine commercial duties then this would potentially lead to lack of compliance with the research protocols and
would interfere with the ability of the research project to achieve its goals.
4.2 Stage 1 – Development of procedures and protocols
