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industry. A process was initiated to obtain permission from industry bodies to access stored datasets managed by DAFWA for the purpose of generating annual industry
summary reports.
5. Extension of project activities into assembly feedlot and property of origin. There was general recognition that events occurring prior to the voyage could influence the risk of
morbidity or mortality during the voyage. There was general support for extension of the project to the assembly feedlot and depending on feasibility and cost, to property of
origin. This issue resulted in a contract extension to the project and the addition of objectives 11 to 13 under Stage 4 See Chapter 2.
7 Results - Stage 3 - Collection of data on 24 months of voyages
7.1 Data sources
Data was sourced from several different sources during the course of this project including from exporters, AAVs, Department of Agriculture website parliamentary summary reports of
livestock export voyages and from the Shipboard Mortality Database SMDB. There were occasions where the summary counts of livestock loaded or unloaded for a particular voyage
and the count of livestock mortalities were not numerically identical in all of these different sources. Discrepancies were assumed to be the result of errors in counting or recording.
Where counts were not the same in data from different sources, an attempt was made to check varying sources and where possible adjust estimates based on the most plausible and
reliable source in order to maintain a baseline dataset that included consistent counts for cattle loaded onto each voyage and for cattle deaths during each voyage.
There was a single voyage with a discrepancy of 1 animal in counts of mortalities between datasets from different sources. In this case, the most reliable source was considered to be
a mortality investigation report accessed from the Department of Agriculture website and this count was then applied to all other datasets for this voyage.
There were two voyages with discrepancies in total cattle loaded. For one voyage the SMDB recorded a figure for total cattle loaded that was 1 animal higher than the figure recorded in
all other sources discrepancy of 1 out of a total loaded of 11,537 cattle. For the other voyage the SMDB record was 35 animals higher 17,484 than records from other sources
17,449. In both cases the datasets used for all analyses were adjusted to reflect the lower total counts.
This approach was necessary because data was combined from different data sources into a single dataset for analyses on mortality during export. Adjustments were so small relative
to total counts that the changes were considered unlikely to have any impact at all on interpretation of analytical results and the reason the changes were necessary was only for
consistency of datasets and reporting.
7.2 Participating voyages
