The bill threatens to expose fractures within the ruling coalition government, which last week introduced tougher oversight of the shipments but stopped short of banning them altogether.

The new government policy came as footage emerged showing 2,400 sheep dying from heat stress on a vessel bound for the Middle East last year.

Backbench lawmaker Sussan Ley said the new rules did not go far enough.

“A 60-kg sheep will be allocated space equivalent to just under two A4 pieces of paper,” Ley told parliament in one of the world’s largest exporters of livestock.

While the bulk of Australia’s meat exports are processed, markets such as the Middle East and Indonesia prefer to buy live animals.

Australia’s chief commodity forecaster in March said it expected 1.9 million live sheep to be sold this year, worth A$250 million.

“For Australian farmers, animal welfare is our highest concern. We need to fix the industry, not ban it,” said Fiona Simson, president of the National Farmers Federation.

The proposed legislation puts Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in a political bind.

Emboldened by opinion polls that show nearly three quarters of voters support an end to the trade, two members of Turnbull’s Liberal Party have said they support Ley’s bill, joining forces with the opposition Labor Party.

The rural-based Nationals, the junior member of the coalition government, opposes a ban, insisting it could inflict widespread damage on Australia’s agricultural sector.

“This strikes at the heart of the coalition arrangement,” said Nick Economou, senior lecturer in Australian politics at Monash University in Melbourne.

“The prime minister cannot let this go forward, he cannot afford to upset the National Party.”

The political alliance that has existed since 1923 was strained this year after an extramarital affair by then Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce triggered a war of words between Australia’s most senior lawmakers.

Turnbull’s government will likely seek to delay the passage of the bill, analysts said, through its control of parliamentary business.

The Labor Party could force a vote on Ley’s bill if it secures the support of two independent lawmakers, a vote that could potentially be too close to call

–– Reporting for Reuters by Colin Packham.

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A study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Columbia University showed production losses caused by high temperatures, predicted to rise further with climate change, now spread more easily from one place to another as they ripple through global supply chains.

In just a decade, the susceptibility of the world’s economic network to heat stress — which causes workers to tire quickly among other physical effects — has doubled, researchers found.

This is because production has become more interlinked since the turn of the century, said co-author Anders Levermann, a top climate change expert at the Potsdam Institute.

The first decade studied, from 1991 to 2001, did not suffer increased production losses, in contrast to the decade from 2001 to 2011, he noted.

“Weather extremes are not really factored into the thinking of a lot of industries, and in particular not weather extremes far away,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “But our study shows it’s really one world with respect to climate impacts.”

The researchers looked at the effects of small daily disruptions to production from extreme temperatures leading to heat stress among workers in construction, agriculture and other economic sectors.

They covered economic flows between 26 industry sectors and final demand in 186 countries, running computer simulations of heat-stress consequences to find out more about how production losses are propagated along supply chains.

“It is really a global phenomenon — whichever sector… is hit by weather extremes is going to have the same response, the same problem,” said Levermann.

The researchers said the findings, published in the journal Science Advances, pointed to the need for societies and businesses to adapt to more intense weather extremes.

For example, they could make better use of insurance against production failures or expand their pool of suppliers, Levermann noted. But for that to happen, there must be greater awareness of climate change and its effects on the global economy, he added.

Flood link to climate change

Work is underway, meanwhile, to strengthen evidence on the links between extreme weather events and climate change.

This week, scientists collaborating on the World Weather Attribution (WWA) program concluded that human-caused climate change played an important role in the heavy rains that pounded parts of France in late May and early June, triggering flooding and destruction.

The probability of three-day extreme rainfall in this season in France has increased by at least 40 per cent because of global warming, they said.

For the Seine river basin, it is likely to happen roughly 80 per cent more often than in the past, and for the Loire around 90 per cent, they added.

But there were no conclusive results from a similar analysis of late-spring thunderstorms in Germany, they noted.

In parts of central and northeastern France, historic flooding of rivers led to widespread power outages and forced Parisian landmarks such as the Louvre art museum to close. The deluges are reported to have killed at least 18 people in Germany, France, Romania and Belgium, the WWA team said.

“These latest lethal floods in Europe illustrate the rising impact of extreme weather events, including (on) developed and well-prepared countries,” said Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

“Sadly we saw that even advanced infrastructure and water management cannot prevent some areas and neighbourhoods being overwhelmed and people sometimes dying.”

— Reporting by Megan Rowling for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, covering humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change.

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The Agriculture Department will consider using the method, condemned by animal rights groups as cruel, if there are no other ways to kill flocks within 24 hours of flu infections being detected, according to a statement.

The agency has set a goal to cull infected flocks within a day to prevent the virus from spreading, after over 48 million chickens and turkeys died from December through June in the nation’s worst-ever animal disease outbreak.

More than two months have passed since the last infection was detected. However, officials are preparing for the potential return of the flu this fall because wild ducks, which are thought to carry the virus, will begin migrating.

Shutting off ventilation systems is “considered by some to be less humane than other methods” of culling flocks, USDA said in a statement this week.

However, the method, known as ventilation shutdown, is a “necessary alternative” because of the need to control and eradicate the virus, according to the agency.

It takes about 30 to 40 minutes for the birds to die from heat stress during ventilation shutdown, said T.J. Myers, associate deputy director of surveillance, preparedness, and response services for USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. USDA has never used the method, he said.

The government is trying to improve its response to the flu after farmers and lawmakers complained the agency moved too slowly in killing infected flocks and disposing of them. Delays can contribute to the spread of the disease and keep farmers out of business.

Shutting down ventilation systems in poultry houses “essentially bakes the birds to death,” according to the Humane Society of the United States.

“Animals suffer immensely with any outbreak of an epidemic like avian influenza, and we shouldn’t compound the problems for birds by subjecting them to a particularly miserable and protracted means of euthanasia,” said Michael Blackwell, the Humane Society’s chief veterinary officer.

The government’s first choices for culling infected poultry will be suffocating them with foam or in chambers filled with carbon dioxide, methods that were widely used this spring with turkeys and egg-laying hens, according to the USDA.

The agency said it plans to approve the use of ventilation shutdown on a case-by-case basis.

— Tom Polansek reports on agriculture and ag commodity markets for Reuters from Chicago.

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As the temperature/humidity chart illustrates, beef cattle like the ones that I saw are susceptible and suffer from one of three Bs (baked, broiled or barbecued) of summertime heat stress. It starts to occur in cattle at any time when the temperature-humidity index (THI) of 72 is exceeded.

As cattle enter the ‘baked’ zone, because they don’t sweat like us (cattle have a 10 per cent capacity to do so), they must rely on panting to dissipate heat to maintain a normal body temperature of 101.5 F (38.6 C). As the weather gets hotter and/or more humid, these cattle figuratively move into the ‘broiled’ zone, where they significantly increase water consumption and lose much interest in eating.

Finally, under extreme heat-stress conditions, cattle are visibly uncomfortable and often foam from the mouth from excessive salvation. Beyond this point, cattle are literarily ‘barbecued’ to death.

Luckily, heat stress fatalities are rare in Western Canada, yet I would expect heat-stressed cows to slow down any significant grazing during the hottest parts of the day. If they don’t catch up at night, overall nutrient intake could be reduced and milk production could be irreversibly compromised. Also, slightly heat-stressed calves usually do not nurse as well and are less likely to use the creep feeders. Cow-calf loss of nutrition leads to significant lower spring calf weaning weights, which could mean lower revenues coming off pasture.

Losses add up

Just consider a 300-cow-calf operation with spring calves that traditionally gain 2.0 lbs. per day, only to stall out during a 21-day heat-stress period in August. When these calves are sold in the fall (assumed at the same time of the year); my calculation for their failure to gain weight/subsequent decreased income is as follows:

300 spring calves x 2 lb./head/ x 21 days x $2.25 (demonstration autumn price — weaned 600-lb. steers) = $28,350. That’s nearly a loss of $30,000 revenue directly due to heat stress.

Overall research supports that heat-stressed cows are more likely to remain open, because they are less likely to ovulate, have irregular estrus cycles, may have poor conception rates, and suffer from a high rate of early embryonic deaths at two different times of pregnancy. Cows that experience early embryonic loss during the first week of pregnancy appear as repeat breeders (return to cycling), while cows that experience fetal death later on come back to cycling at the end of the breeding season.

Late-breeding season bulls (re: breeding bull still out on pasture) might also become temporarily infertile due to heat stress.

Managing heat stress

Producers can’t change the weather, but there are many proactive steps that can help reduce hot weather’s negative impact upon the comfort and performance of the beef herd:

1. Lots of cool, clean water must be provided. The water surface area should be sufficient for a large number of cattle to drink at the same time, and the water flow within the waterers and tanks should be replenished, quickly.
2. Cows and calves should access to trees and other forms of shade. Open buildings and pole sheds with light-coloured roofs can be used to provide shade. Windbreaks will provide shade, but they reduce air movement and sometimes contribute to heat-stress.
3. Adjust pasture management. Under rotational grazing systems; rotate the cattle through pastures more quickly. This change allows cattle to graze more digestible pasture forages which lowers their internal generation of heat from fiber fermentation.
4. Feed a nutritious and palatable creep feed to nursing calves. It is also a good idea to frequently check the creep feeders, and not allow them to go empty.
5. Provide salt and a good commercial mineral at all times. Pasture studies suggest cattle need more sodium, potassium, and magnesium under heat stress.
6. Implement a good fly-control program. Many producers implement insecticide ear tags and use cattle back-rubbers, dusters and oilers. Eliminate shallow pools, muddy areas and other fly-breeding spots.

We can help grazing cattle and calves hit hard by the three Bs of heat stress by implementing these coping techniques. It’s my experience that they do work. A few years ago, I took a beef management course at Texas A&M University. One afternoon, I was walking down the street in College Station and the temperature was 40 C with a relative humidity of about 80 per cent (THI = 99). The rest of the day, I spent in the hotel pool, in the shade and drinking diet Pepsi. I felt much better.

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In Canada, when we think of environmental stress, we generally think of those mid-winter days where below-zero temperatures and/or wind combine to increase the maintenance energy requirements of cattle. In other parts of North America, particularly the southern U.S. and Mexico, heat stress is an equally serious threat to productivity. To understand how extremes in environmental conditions impact the animal and how it adapts to such stress, it is necessary to explore how an animal regulates its body temperature. Normal body temperature in cattle is 38.5 C and must be maintained within relatively tight limits for normal physiological function. One of the challenges to maintaining a constant body temperature is the need to dissipate heat generated from normal metabolism and digestion, particularly rumen fermentation. The ability of cattle to dissipate such heat is influenced by a number of internal and external factors. Heat is lost from the body via radiation (loss to atmosphere), evaporation (respiration, sweating) or by convection and conduction (air/water movement across or in contact with skin).

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Under “normal” environmental conditions, dissipating this body heat is not a large issue and the energy required to do so is considered a part of normal maintenance requirements. However, when environmental temperatures rise to a point where the animal has difficulty dissipating body heat, steps must be taken to actively lose that heat (i.e. seek shade, increase water intake, decrease feed intake, increase respiration rate). Conversely, when the environmental temperature falls, at some point the body heat produced by the animal is no longer sufficient to maintain its core body temperature and steps are taken to generate heat (i.e. shivering, increase feed intake, seek shelter). The range of environmental temperatures where cattle do not have to expend energy to maintain normal body temperature is known as the thermal neutral zone. The points where cattle must actively lose or generate heat are referred to as the upper and lower critical temperatures, respectively.

It is not possible to precisely define the temperatures that define the thermal neutral zone for any group of cattle, as both the upper and lower critical temperatures are a result of complex interactions between environmental (i.e. ambient temperature, wind speed, humidity), animal (i.e. hide thickness, summer versus winter hair coat) and management (i.e. windbreaks; muddy pens, bedding) factors. To understand how these factors interact, let’s look at heat stress. If we use 25 C as a starting point, as the ambient temperature rises and approaches/exceeds 30 C, the animal will experience greater difficulty in dissipating heat. When these high temperatures are combined with humid conditions, the animal’s ability to shed body heat is greatly reduced and the result is heat stress. The higher the humidity and/or ambient temperature, the greater the impact! Heat-stressed cattle show a range of symptoms. In mild cases, cattle will seek shade, or water sources to cool themselves, change or reduce eating/grazing patterns and alter their herd behaviour. Physiologically they will increase their respiration rate. In more severe cases cattle will exhibit very rapid rates of respiration to the point where they are actively panting in order to increase heat loss.

For many Canadian producers, heat stress is not high on their radar, however, it has obvious implications on production, animal welfare and ultimately on economic return. In the feedlot, it will lead to reduced dry matter intakes, lower gains and extended days on feed. In breeding cattle, milk production drops off with implications on weaning weights and breeding programs can be extended, particularly if your bulls are overconditioned. In severe cases, death can result. Alberta Agriculture has an excellent fact sheet that provides practical advice on minimizing heat stress in cattle. As we move into the dog days of summer, it is worth reading.

Cold stress is a much more familiar concept to Canadian producers. Like heat stress, the point where cattle actively take steps to increase heat production to maintain core body temperature is influenced by a number of interacting environmental, animal and management factors. However, since it is only June, it does not seem appropriate to be writing on winter feeding and management strategies. As such, I will save this discussion for a future article. In the meantime, keep your eye on the horizon (or the weather channel) as you never know what system is moving in next.

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