The live animal export trade, which ships millions of cattle and sheep each year to slaughterhouses from Indonesia to Egypt, said it should remain largely unscathed.

"The numbers would be fairly minimal," a spokeswoman for industry group LiveCorp told Reuters.

Calls by animal rights activists for a total ban on live exports were also not expected to damage the trade.

"It's a bit like saying we should ban the airline business because every now and again an airline goes down and kills a lot of people," LiveCorp spokesman Mike Hayward said.

He was responding to a call by Animals Australia executive director Glenys Oogjes for an immediate end to the live trade.

Australian Agriculture Minister Warren Truss this week followed an industry recommendation that exports of hereford and angus cattle to the Arabian Gulf from southern parts of Australia be halted during the northern hemisphere summer.

Australian industry authorities attributed the deaths to extreme heat.

SACRIFICE

Industry sources told Reuters yesterday that less than 10 percent of Australia's 250,000 head a year of live cattle exports to the Middle East and North Africa go to the Arabian Gulf, where exports are now temporarily banned.

Most are shipped through the Red Sea, for markets such as Egypt and the western side of Saudi Arabia.

Exports of about 20,000 head a year were likely to be "sacrificed" by the industry through the bans, Hayward said.

Bans would be kept in place until an inquiry by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, and LiveCorp was completed, he said.

The temporary ban was seen ending in October.

Egypt is by far the largest market for Australian live cattle in the Middle East/North Africa region, taking 38,367 head in the five months to May this year. Saudi Arabia took 11,404 head, Jordan only 137 head and Kuwait, in the Gulf, 3,553 head.

Total exports to other Middle Eastern nations, including Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the latter two in the Gulf, amounted to 3,265 head.

Total exports in the five months amounted to 279,965 head.

The LiveCorp spokeswoman said it was puzzling that the deaths had occurred in a new purpose-built ship.

All deaths were of bos taurus cattle, such as herefords and angus, while bos indicus cattle, such as brahmans and droughtmaster, and 63,000 sheep also on board the Becrux were not affected. This ruled out disease as the cause of the deaths, she said.

Another vessel, the Maysora, which left southern Australia the day after the Becrux carrying 1,200 head to Saudi Arabia, was not hit by a large number of deaths.

But the Maysora travelled to the Red Sea, not the Gulf, with its extremes of heat, the LiveCorp spokeswoman said.

Australia's live cattle trade is an export success, rising from virtually nothing a decade ago to 826,000 head valued at A$545 million in 2001. Australia also exported 6.8 million live sheep, worth A$366 million, last year.