Sheep ship docks in Australia

About 50,000 unwanted sheep are stranded on a ship in the Gulf

A livestock ship has docked in the Australian state of Victoria after being prevented from coming into port for a day by animal rights activists.

The protesters said bad weather and a 200-metre (200 yard) exclusion zone imposed around the vessel had meant they could no longer prevent it berthing at Portland harbour.

The ship is due to take a consignment of sheep aboard, bound for the Middle East.

The activists had blocked it to draw attention to the plight of more than 50,000 sheep from Australia stranded for several weeks aboard another ship in the Gulf.

The animals have been rejected by Saudi Arabia, which said there was too high a level of "scabby mouth" disease among the animals.

The sheep have also been turned down by the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.

A shipment of 65,000 New Zealand sheep was also stopped from embarking for Saudi Arabia after New Zealand authorities feared it could face the same uncertainty.

Big business

The Saudi-bound animals' fate has highlighted Australia's live export trade, which animal rights activists denounce as inhumane because livestock are transported for weeks in ships that are often crowded and hot.

Most of Australia's shipments of live animals go to Islamic countries that require halal meat products - from animals that have been killed in according to Muslim tradition.

"The journey from here in cramped, suffocating conditions in temperatures still in the 40s (degrees Celsius) and humidity up to 100% is nothing less than appalling," Ralph Hahnheuser of the Australian group Animal Liberation said.

Livestock exporters say new regulations governing live exports have reduced the loss of animals by half.

Australia is the world's largest exporter of livestock, shipping six million sheep to markets in Asia and the Middle East every year.