I agree with almost all of your comments, but I don't see that "cleaning up our own backyard" and improving the welfare outcomes for our animals that are exported overseas are mutually exclusive. Both need urgent attention and should be done at the same time. I do reject your characterisation of animal rights activists, as there are a large number of people who are NOT vegan or vegetarian and still care about animal welfare. Just for the record, I am a professional who works in the animal industry whose family has been and is still currently involved in all levels of the meat industry.

I spent some of my early formative years on farms.
In an absolute first, I absolutely agree with everything you say Sophie!
Rhrosty.

Congratulations Sophie. It is not often that I come across a piece that puts the case for animal welfare in as balanced a manner as you have.

What you have not mentioned is that the big issue in improving animal welfare in the ways you suggest is cost.

If you want all chickens and pigs to live their lives outdoors, you can expect to maybe pay double the price for the meat. Unless they are run at very low densities and get a high proportion of their diet from foraging, consumers won't be able to tell the difference anyway.

If you don't like animals with high growth genetics and want to go back to how they were 100 years ago, you will probably triple the cost of production and the product will be inferior in terms of meat yield and other characteristics. It costs money to have to feed an animal twice as long before turning them off.

Similarly, if you don't approve of modern dairy cattle that produce big volumes of milk, you can expect to pay a lot more for milk from lower yielding cows, that will need to be run in vastly greater numbers.

I don't know if you want your vegetarian diet to come exclusively from organically grown produce. If the world totally did away with artificial chemicals and fertilizers, food production would drop by at least two thirds. Australian soils are amongst the most depleted in phosphorus and our food output would be more affected than most.

Personally, I love a juicy steak, tender breast of chicken, lamb roast etc. You don't know what you are missing!

Congratulations to Sophie again and the current comments but she is very discouraging over suggesting how we should all deal with the problem. The only possible solution in the long run is that live export becomes unnecessary and all livestock goes to the abattoir in Australia. This must be a long process as not only do the necessary abattoirs have to be built and financed but the N.T. farmers have to produce properly finished animals. There has just been a very good start in that A.A.Co have just built a brand new abattoir in Darwin. The next step should be a small tax on every head of livestock exported from Australia. Initially small enough not to destroy the industry but high enough to encourage the required results. The proceeds could profitably be reinvested in more abattoirs or at least Joe Hockey will be delighted with a small reduction in his deficit.
My wife and I have run beef enterprises for most of our lives, some in tropical third world countries. It is perfectly possible to produce finished animals in the tropics and to make sure they are sold to an approved abattoir. Just get the abattoirs up and running and tax money coming in

Bren, you have hit the nail on the head. Our meat DOES need to cost more. In a rather similar way to the way that the true cost of burning fossil fuels is externalised into the environment, the true cost of producing meat in as humane a way as possible is higher than that if we just go for the cheapest option. The low cost option unfortunately has some severe compromises where animal welfare is concerned.
As I said in a previous post, I am no starry eyed animal rights activist or vegan. I am speaking with over 30 years experience in animal production related fields. I am sure if the average person was taken on a tour of an intensive piggery, poultry or beef feedlot they would be horrified to know how their "cheap" meat is produced.
Speaking from personal experience again,historically, meat was much more expensive than it is now and people seemed to survive OK (and were probably healthier with slightly less meat consumption).Higher meat prices benefit everyone in the industry from the producer up through the supply chain, allowing a more viable industry with higher production standards.

Of course, changes need to be gradual, and I personally think the knee-jerk reaction when the live export was stopped was an appalling piece of political grandstanding, especially when I know that it is definitely back to business as usual for the big companies involved in live export with respect to their standards of animal care. Changes need to be consumer driven in the end, but first we need better informed consumers, and the big end of town in the animal production industries have certainly done their best to prevent any form of transparency with respect to their production methods and actions.