Page 88 of 201
Carry-over stock are those that do not meet requirements for the current consignment but may do so for a future consignment. These animals are held separate to the consignment
livestock and, if treatment is successful, may be considered for inclusion in a future consignment.
8.1.6 Load-out
Cattle are typically held off water for up to 12 hours prior to loading and off food for 6-8 hours.
Generally animals are not individually weighed at load-out. During load-out cattle are loaded onto trucks by line and also according to their final location
on the ship. The road journey from the registered premises to port of loading must be less than 8 hours and most registered premises have typically road transit times to the port that
are considerably shorter than the ASEL requirement.
Permission to leave for loading and the exit from the registered premises is only permitted when both the animals to be exported and export vessel have passed the necessary AQIS
and Australian Maritime Safety Authority AMSA inspections. If in an extraordinary circumstance, loading cannot take place after cattle have already commenced their journey
to the vessel, they can either return to the same facility, or if closer or offering a better welfare outcome, can be taken to another registered premises en-route.
8.2 Study population
The approach was to work with exporters to identify opportunities to collect samples from cattle during the assembly period and then once those cattle were loaded onto the ship to
enrol that voyage in Stage 3 of the project.
Where possible the sampling strategy was designed to collect nasal swabs from a larger number of animals and serum samples from a subset of these cattle. Nasal swabs were
tested using qPCR to detect the presence of genetic material from the major viral and bacterial respiratory disease pathogens of interest using the same tests as have been
described in the previous chapter. Serum samples were analysed.
Samples were collected from cattle being prepared for four voyages Table 26 and Table 27. Three of these voyages were enrolled in Stage 3 voyage codes 5, 8 and 17 and
therefore findings from the assembly testing were able to be related to causes of death information derived from the voyage and reported in the previous section. One voyage
voyage code 18 was not able to be enrolled in Stage 3 and therefore assembly sampling was not able to be related to information on causes of death from the voyage. Data were
obtained on voyage details from the SMDB database for voyage 18 to allow a range of summary information to be reported for this voyage.
Nasal swab samples were collected from 1,484 animals, representing 1-5 of the total cattle loaded onto these voyages.
Cattle were sampled from eight separate assembly depots across three states Table 27. Animals were believed not to have been vaccinated against respiratory disease prior to
arriving at the depot.
Page 89 of 201
Cohort sampling within one assembly depot involved systematic sampling of animals from the same property of origin based on PIC numbers in order to obtain sufficient numbers of
animals from each of multiple cohorts, so that prevalence estimates may be produced for cohort and depot and voyage.
Page 90 of 201 Table 26: Summary information for those voyages where cattle were sampled during the assembly period
Voyage code
Year Season
Load ports Discharge
country Voyage
duration Cattle
loaded Voyage
deaths Assembly samples
Swabs Serum
days N
n n
n 5
2010 Summer Fremantle
Turkey 23.6
19,990 148
410 8
2011 Autumn
Portland, Fremantle Saudi Arabia,
Turkey 34.9
17,449 52
413 17
2012 Autumn
Adelaide, Fremantle Turkey
33.6 7,811
39 561
334 18
2012 Autumn
Portland, Fremantle Russia
36.8 9,068
33 100
54,318 272
1,484 334
Page 91 of 201 Table 27: Details of assembly samples collected by cohort and voyage
Voyage code
Cohort code
Depot Days before
loading Class
Assembly samples State
Code Swabs
Serum Note
d n
n
5 1
WA 4
NA Feeder
10 a
2 WA
4 9
Feeder 200
3 WA
1 5
Slaughter 200
Total number of samples collected for voyage 5 410
8 4
VIC 7
28 Feeder
102 5
WA 2
27 Feeder
112 6
WA 4
21 Slaughter
99 7
WA 3
19 Slaughter
100 Total number of samples collected for voyage 8
413
17 8a
WA 5
16 Feeder
25 25
b 8b
WA 5
9 Feeder
18 c
9 SA
8 9
Feeder 92
91 10
SA 8
8 Slaughter
20 11
WA 6
13 Feeder
75 75
12a WA
5 12
Feeder 143
143 d
12b WA
5 3
Feeder 108
e 13
WA 5
5 Slaughter
80 Total number of samples collected for voyage 17
561 334
18 14
WA 1
28 Breeder
100 Total number of swabs collected for voyage 18
100
Total number of samples collected overall 1,484
334
Note: a: ten cattle that were not loaded onto the voyage because of health concerns
b: cattle carried over in the assembly depot from the previous voyage, first of two samples from the same cohort.
c: second sampling from the same cohort, 7 days after the first sampling. d: first sampling of newly arrived cattle.
e: second sampling of same cohort, 9 days after first sampling.
Voyages 5, 8 and 17 were made up of a mixture of feeder and slaughter cattle. Voyage 18 was a shipment of breeder cattle to the Russian Federation. Overall the class breakdown
was 60 feeder, 34 slaughter and 6 breeder. Eighty-four percent of cattle were Bos taurus or B. taurus crosses and 16 were Bos indicus genotype. Eighty-seven percent of
cattle were male 65 steer, 23 bull; 62 feeder, 38 slaughter and 13 were female 57 breeder, 43 feeder.
Within voyage 17, nested sampling at two different time periods on the same cohorts was used to investigate whether the prevalence of viral and bacterial shedding changed with time
Table 27. Cohort 8 was a group of cattle that had entered the assembly depot in
Page 92 of 201
preparation for the previous voyage and that were retained in the assembly depot and loaded onto the next available voyage voyage 17. These animals are commonly described
as ‘carried over’ or ‘held over’. A random and representative sample of animals from cohort 8
were sampled on two occasions with the second sampling occurring seven days after the first sampling.
Cohort 12 was a newly arrived group of cattle that were sampled initially on the day of arrival at the assembly depot and then sampled a second time nine days later.
It was not possible to select the same individuals for sampling at the first and second sampling sessions, but animals that were sampled at the second session were selected from
pens containing animals that had been sampled at the first session for each of the two re- sampled cohorts.
Serum samples were collected from animals from 1 voyage voyage 17. Serum and nasal swab samples collected from the same animal in another nested study aimed at comparing
nasal swab test results to serum antibody test results from the same animals. Samples were collected at the time animals arrived at the assembly depot for four separate cohorts of
animals from two states Table 27.
8.3 Detection of respiratory pathogens
