AUSTRALIA: Company claims it could have supplied more of the humane restraining boxes

An engineering company in Queensland says it could have produced more of the humane restraining boxes for Australian cattle slaughtered overseas, but it wasn't asked.

Meat and Livestock Australia has funded several projects to assess and build improved restraining boxes.

But Gary Stark, from Stark Engineering, says he only supplied nine hydraulic assisted boxes last year.

"We could build four or five a week, no problem at all," he said.

"It all comes back to budgets and timeframes.

"If you're supplying something for somebody that's not paying for something, and you walk into a business and say listen I want to put this machine in there, they're operating in a specific way, they might not want to change."

Gary Stark says MLA has "done a bloody good job, up to this point" in trying to improve the slaughter process in Indonesia.

He describes the hydraulic restraint box as better system that can work on low power or by pumping the hydraulics by hand.

"It's way better because it fully restrains the animal and rolls them over.

"They lay on the table.

"We actually developed from our bull rollover table which we've been using for the last 30 years and it's hydraulically clamped as well as hydraulic rolling over."