Converting aging cruise liners to floating abattoirs would deliver savings and efficiencies for farmers, believes David Blackley, dry stock farmer of Tauranga.

The radical idea, David says, could also result in an up to 40 per cent improvement in returns for farmers.

David says cruise liners are ideal for conversion to mobile abattoirs because they have air conditioning, water, a pen-size layout (for example, former cabins), stabilisers for creature comfort; and are self-berthing.
He sees such vessels calling at ports around New Zealand to take on board livestock, which would then be slaughtered to order on route to market, to be delivered as fresh or chilled meat.
The vessels would be able to relieve the pressure on existing facilities in times of adverse weather, such as the summer drought which meant some farmers found it hard to have animals slaughtered when their feed supplies were running low.

Diversify
David believes wool and skins could also be processed on-board and could be waste stored for use as fertiliser as it is in conventional abattoirs. The floating slaughter houses would reduce the need to transport refrigerated containers around the world, many which return empty to New Zealand, he says.
'We need this kind of long term thinking because New Zealand is further away from our markets; and our current labour costs and carcass expenses are too high. There are high capital costs per output from our current facilities and high costs of transport to market – all of which add up to insufficient profit margins for farmers.”

Australia
Floating abattoirs could also collect animals from other countries, including Australia, to keep the plants operating year round.
There would be savings in staffing too. 'No transport costs, not housing or food costs, as all would be supplied on-board.”
David's vision includes the ships being converted at the Port of Tauranga, providing additional employment in the region.
However, the ‘cruise ship to killing ship' idea hasn't won favour with Federated Farmers president Bruce Wills. 'I applaud David's innovative thinking, when we are in a time where we need to be looking at all options for the sector. However, my initial response would be that any plan that involves processing livestock on ships, when we already have over capacity of processing here on land, would not be widely accepted.”
What the industry doesn't need right now is even more processing capacity, says Bruce.

Quick fix
'We need to come up with a long lasting answer to the meat industry's problems, rather than any quick fix. Social acceptance of live shipments, even if the outcome at the destination was processed product, is also not particularly positive.
'Different parts of an animal have different values in different markets, so as soon as you put them on the ship you would lose the advantage of being able to send respective pieces to the best-paying market,” says Bruce.
'I am not sure where funding for this proposed ‘floating processing' would come from. The meat sector already faces multi-million dollar bills for shutting down plants on land before finding money to start anew on the high seas.”