The Portland sheep were supposed to be shipped today His first attempt ended last month when his navigation system and generator broke."I'm still a little emotional .. I really didn't want to be here. His 26-foot boat, Hornette, capsized about 745 miles into his 8,800-mile voyage.Speaking to New Zealand radio, Mr Shekhdar said he would not rule out a third attempt "It's scary out there. I'd hate to think I can't achieve it, because it is achievable."His plans may be thwarted by New Zealand's Maritime Safety Authority (MSA), which said it was considering applying safety legislation on the seaworthiness of boats to prevent him. "We would be strongly advising him against it," an MSA spokeswoman said.Mr Shekhdar left New Zealand on 5 November and intended to reach Cape Town in the spring after rounding Cape Horn on the stormy tip of South America, where temper-atures can drop to minus 35C.He said the violent winds that ended his second journey caught him by surprise. Ralph Hahnheuser of Animal Liberation said: "The fact is they no longer meet the requirements of countries in the Middle East." But a video made by the group of the supposed infiltration did not make clear that the sheep were fed pig. The Victorian Farmers Federation called for the campaigners to be charged. But police said they had no evidence that an offence had taken place.. A veteran British rower rescued after his boat capsized on his second attempt to row from New Zealand to South Africa may have to go to court if he wants to try again.
Five thousand of them died after Saudi Arabia refused to take them. The animals, which the Saudis claimed were diseased, were eventually accepted by Eritrea.Police and agriculture officials were examining sheep held in pens in the port of Portland, Victoria, yesterday to try to verify the claim by Animal Liberation.The activists said they put rendered pig meat into the animals' feeding system overnight, but Philip King, the owner of the holding pen, said security guards had seen nothing untoward.Feeding animal products to livestock is banned in Australia, where the live export trade, worth £8m a year, is still reeling from the controversy over the sheep destined for Saudi.The Portland sheep were supposed to be shipped today. Animal rights activists claimed yesterday to have fed pig meat to 70,000 sheep awaiting shipment to the Middle East in an effort to render them unsuitable for consumption by Muslims. The government aims to treat 50,000 patients within the first year of the program.The plan is expected to cost 296m rand (£26m) this year, growing to nearly 4.5bn rand (£400m) in 2007-8.The UN Aids co-ordinator for South Africa, Mbulawa Mugabe, called it "a huge breakthrough for the country".Aids activists at the nation's Treatment Action Campaign said they had been waiting for this day for five years. |
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