African and local sheep on the menu as livestock trade shifts

• Activism impacts sourcing
• Shipping insurance costs rise
• African supply expands

As Eid al Adha approaches, consumers in Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf region can expect imports of animals and meat of varying provenance from their traditional suppliers, analysts say.

African exporters and Gulf self-sufficiency projects are stepping in to fill gaps in the Middle East’s livestock supply as Australian and other providers step back. 

The Middle East is a global hub of livestock imports and shipping.

Saudi Arabia imports about 5 million live animals per year, most of them sheep and goats, data from the World Organization for Animal Health shows. This trade is worth an estimated $1.5 billion, according to the global trade data platform Observatory of Economic Complexity.

Saudi Arabia’s importance to global livestock shipping is no surprise: the slaughter of animals, primarily sheep, goats and camels, is a central ritual during the Eid al Adha celebration.

Australia exports roughly 20 percent of its livestock to the Middle East but these fell by a fifth last year compared with 2023. Sheep exports were down 34 percent, the Australian Livestock Export Corporation reported. The country will ban all livestock exports by boat by 2028.

In 2013 and again in 2018, alleged cruelty to livestock shipped to the Middle East became a major story in Australia.

EU-wide sheep exports to the Middle East, meanwhile, are expected to decrease by nearly 19 percent by 2035.

Part of this is because of systemic changes underway in the industry, driven by a self-perpetuating cycle of public activism pushing up already-high insurance prices in livestock shipping.

“Most mainstream insurers refuse to cover livestock carriers,” Cameron Livingstone, maritime lawyer and former claims executive at maritime insurer Gard, tells AGBI. This means ships must engage with lower-tier insurers, exerting a price pressure on livestock shipping.

Ship owners in Lebanon and Jordan operate the most livestock vessels and have the highest tonnage capacity, according to Lloyd’s List. Of 64 EU-approved livestock carriers, 41 percent are owned by Lebanese entities.

Shipping insurers are leaving the industry. 

“Given the issues around live sheep exports from Australia to the Middle East, our company exited the market following significant shareholder and public activism in Australia back in 2019,” says a member of the International Union of Marine Insurance’s Cargo Committee, who did not want to be identified.

Nonetheless, the Middle East is forecast to import about 9 million live sheep and goats in 2028, up from 8.3 million in 2024, Meat & Livestock Australia predicts.

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The Intergovernmental Authority of Development region wants to step in to pick up the slack. IGAD is a regional organisation in east Africa, comprising Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda. 

IGAD accounts for about 50 percent of imports of live animals to the Middle East and North Africa, but says there is “big potential” to further increase its market share.

Local husbandry is also expected to take up some of the demand. In January, Saudi Arabia announced a $2.4 billion plan to develop the largest livestock “city” in the Middle East, which could supply 30 percent of the kingdom’s demand for red meat.

“Livestock have been transported for thousands of years,” Livingstone says. “I don’t think it’s going away.”

However, the technology to move frozen and refrigerated meat is improving, and economies of scale are making it cheaper, he says.

That will not definitively end the shipping of livestock. For Muslims in the Middle East, the trade must continue for religious reasons.

However, “we could see that making a dent in the shipping of live animals if it continues,” Livingstone says.