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period. The most prominent reduction from earlier time periods 1995-2002 to later periods is a reduction in Summer month peak mortality rates. The lowest mortality rates in every
month were achieved in the most recent year-group 2010-2012. The evidence is consistent with a progressive reduction in monthly mortality rates over time, with the biggest effect
appearing in those Summer months that had the highest mortality rates in the 1990’s.
9.5 Effect of destination region
Countries included in each region were defined as follows: MENA Middle East and North Africa: Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya,
Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates; SE Asia South East Asia: Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore,
Vietnam; NE Asia North East Asia: China, Japan, Russian ports on the Pacific facing coast of
Russia, South Korea; SE Europe South East Europe: Turkey and Russian ports on the Black Sea; and
MISC Miscellaneous: East Timor, Mauritius, Mexico, New Caledonia, Russian ports on the west coast near Finland, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Sri Lanka.
Summary statistics for voyages by region were presented. Retrospective data for sea voyages between January 1995 and December 2012 was obtained from the Shipboard
Mortality Database SMDB. Between January 1995 and December 2012, cattle were transported by sea from 29 ports in Australia to 124 ports in 30 countries around the globe.
South East Asia accounted for the majority of exported cattle, followed by MENA and NE Asia. The number of cattle exported to each market varies each year Figure 9.
Table 40. There were very few voyages to SE Europe and to MISC regions. The MISC region also includes a reasonably disparate group of separate countries that may have quite
different characteristics and therefore the findings for this region are of relatively little inferential value.
Figure 14 shows mean mortality rate by destination region.
Page 122 of 201 Figure 14: Marginal mean mortality rate by destination region deaths per 1,000 cattle-days at
risk. Bars represent 95 confidence intervals.
The primary interest is in the three regions that have accounted for most voyages: MENA, SE Asia and NE Asia. Within these three regions, the overall mortality rate for MENA was
significantly higher than both SE Asia p0.001 and NE Asia P0.001. The mortality rate for SE Asia was higher than for NE ASIA p=0.001. It is important to note that these
comparisons involved appropriate adjustment for voyage duration to account for the fact that voyages to Asian regions are likely to be shorter in duration than voyages to the MENA.
Further analyses were conducted to explore associations between region and year and month of year. These were limited to MENA and SE Asia because the other regions had
fewer voyages particularly SE Europe or were miscellaneous aggregations of non-similar voyages with no voyages in some months or years MISC.
Figure 15 shows mean mortality rate by year for voyages to MENA and SE Asia only.
.0 2
5 .0
5 .0
7 5
.1 .1
2 5
.1 5
.1 7
5 .2
.2 2
5 .2
5
MENA SE ASIA
NE ASIA SE EUROPE
MISC
Destination
Page 123 of 201 Figure 15: Marginal mean mortality rate by year for voyages to MENA and SE Asia only deaths
per 1,000 cattle-days at risk. Bars represent 95 confidence intervals.
Mortality rates for both MENA and SE Asia showed a progressive decline over time with variation in any particular year. There were noticeable declines for SE Asia from 2000 to
2003 and 2009 onwards, and for MENA from 2006 to 2007 and from 2009 onwards.
The sharp rise for MENA in 2006 was due to a single voyage from PortlandFremantle to Israel that had a reportable mortality event. When the analysis was repeated with this one
voyage filtered, the sharp rise for MENA in 2006 was no longer present. The mortality investigation report for this voyage attributed deaths to pneumonia, heat stress and leg
injuriessepticaemia, as the main causes and this mortality event was one of the factors that contributed to the development of this project.
Figure 16 shows mean mortality rate for each destination region arranged by year-group 1995-2002, 2003-2009, 2010-2012. Inspection of Figure 16 supports the conclusion that
there has been a progressive reduction in mortality rate over time, though it is more apparent in some regions than in others and there is a suggestion of a rise in mortality rate in NE Asia
in the most recent year-group. The wide confidence intervals for MISC reflect the lower number of voyages and the more disparate collection of destinations in this category.
Voyages to SE Europe only commenced in the 2010-2012 interval.
.0 5
.1 .1
5 .2
.2 5
.3 .3
5 .4
.4 5
.5
19 95
19 96
19 97
19 98
19 99
20 00
20 01
20 02
20 03
20 04
20 05
20 06
20 07
20 08
20 09
20 10
20 11
20 12
Year
MENA SE ASIA
Page 124 of 201 Figure 16: Marginal mean mortality rate for each destination region arranged by year-group
1995-2002, 2003-2009, 2010-2012. Bars represent 95 confidence intervals.
Figure 17 and Figure 18 show the same broad pattern of a general reduction in mortality rate from the oldest time period 1995-2002 to the most recent time period 2010-2012 though
in some months this was not always consistent. As an example, Summer mortality rate for voyages to MENA showed relatively little reduction over time December and January,
Figure 17. In contrast, the Summer rise in mortality for voyages to SE Asia is still apparent in the most recent time period 2010-2012, however it has been greatly ameliorated in
comparison to the 1995-2002 period Figure 18.
The rise in mortality rate in late Winter for MENA does represent a significant change. The mortality rate in July was significantly higher than April p=0.02 and September p=0.04.
0.05 0.1
0.15 0.2
0.25 0.3
0.35 0.4
1 2
3 4
5 Mo
rta li
ty r
at e
d e
at h
s p e
r 1,000 ca
tt le
-d ay
s
Discharge region 1995-2002
2003-2009 2010-2012
MENA SE ASIA
NE ASIA SE EUROPE
MISC
Page 125 of 201 Figure 17: Mean mortality rate by month of year and year group for voyages to MENA only.
Bars represent 95 confidence intervals.
Figure 18: Mean mortality rate by month of year and year group for voyages to SE Asia only. Bars represent 95 confidence intervals.
.0 5
.1 .1
5 .2
.2 5
.3 .3
5 .4
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10
11 12
Month of year
1995-2002 2003-2009
2010-2012
.0 5
.1 .1
5 .2
.2 5
.3 .3
5 .4
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10
11 12
Month of year
1995-2002 2003-2009
2010-2012
Page 126 of 201
9.6 Port of loading
