Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke, today signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with his Bahraini counterpart, Dr Juma Ahmed Al Kaabi, at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) World Food Summit in Rome.

The MoU with Bahrain sets out arrangements for live export trade and includes guidelines for the offloading of Australian live animals arriving in the Middle East.

“The welfare of animals extends past their destination port to their post arrival and handling and improving these standards is key to our live animal export trade,” Mr Burke said.

Bahrain is Australia’s third largest livestock market in the Middle East and was valued at $65.5 million in 2008-09.

Mr Burke has also signed an MoU with his Sudanese counterpart, Dr Faysal Hassan Ibrahim, for the trade in live animals.

However, Mr Burke will return home to another round of anti-farmer headlines and renewed demands for legislative action after last night's 60 Minutes story in which footage obtained by Animals Australia showed what they describe as "the cruel conditions endured by breeding pigs in factory farms in Australia".

The footage, obtained illegally, showed a commercial piggery's sow stalls, which Australian Pork Ltd chief executive Andrew Spencer agreed was "filthy" but was not indicative of how the industry operated.

He also defended the use of sow stalls as a means of protecting sows from their naturally aggressive behaviour towards each other.

However, Animals Australia executive director, Glenys Oogjes, said the pig industry had made Australian consumers complicit in animal cruelty without their knowledge or permission.

"Politicians and pig producers may think it acceptable to treat animals this way, but an informed community will not," she said.

"There is no excuse, no possible justification for confining an animal for weeks on end so that it can barely move.

"These intelligent animals are denied the legal protection from acts of cruelty afforded to companion animals.

"Just because they are destined to end up on a plate, doesn't lessen our ethical obligation to treat them humanely."