Australia has suspended its $350 million a year live cattle trade with Indonesia for up to six months due to cruelty concerns, the government said Wednesday as a key political party called for a permanent ban on such exports to any country.

The ban follows a public outcry over gruesome images broadcast on Australian television last week of Indonesian slaughterhouses where cattle were beaten and took minutes to bleed to death as their throats were repeatedly slashed. The doomed animals stood shaking in fear as cattle were skinned before their eyes.

Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig, who signed the suspension order, said the trade would be halted for up to six months until proper treatment for the exported animals was assured according to World Organization for Animal Health guidelines.

"Nobody accepts _ the community doesn't accept _ the animal welfare outcomes that we all saw on the television," Ludwig told reporters. "I want to ensure that the community and the industry can guarantee that we have outcomes where cattle aren't mistreated."

Muslim-majority Indonesia is Australia's largest live cattle market, but Australian cattle and sheep are also shipped live to the Middle East and other countries where they are often slaughtered according to Muslim custom by having their throats cut.

Live Australian cattle account for up to 40 percent of Indonesia's beef consumption, while Indonesia buys 60 percent of Australia's live cattle exports. The trade with Indonesia is worth about 330 million Australian dollars ($350 million) a year.

Indonesia's Minister of Agriculture, Suswono, who like many Indonesians uses a single name, said he has sent a letter to Australia's health minister to conduct a joint Australia-Indonesia verification of standards at the 12 slaughterhouses highlighted by the Australian TV program.

He said the joint verification team, consisting of eight members with four from each country, will begin work on Monday and the results are expected within 10 days.

"We will develop and issue strict guidelines to all slaughterhouses across the country to avoid such improper animal treatment and torture," he said.

Suswono urged Indonesians to not panic about a possible beef shortage, saying the country can still import processed beef from Australia and also increase its reliance on local cattle.

As a last resort, Indonesia could import beef from other countries such as New Zealand and the United States, he said.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Bayu Krisnamurti said that Indonesia's stock of live cattle is sufficient to last four months, which includes the Islamic holiday Eid-al-Fitr in August, when most Indonesians celebrate the end of the holy Ramadan month of fasting with feasts including many types of beef dishes.

Australian lawmaker Adam Bandt, whose Greens party's support is crucial to the government remaining in power, said he will introduce a bill to parliament this month that would permanently ban all live cattle and sheep exports.

"Live animal exports are shiploads of misery," Bandt said.

The campaign to end all live exports from Australia is supported by animal welfare organizations Animals Australia and the Australian Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, better known as the RSPCA.

Lyn White, an Animals Australia campaign director who video recorded the gruesome slaughter scenes broadcast last week, doubted that an Indonesia-wide guarantee of humane treatment of Australian livestock could be achieved within six months.

"I would suggest that its highly unlikely, considering that animals are distributed throughout Java and Sumatra at the moment to local slaughterhouses and local markets," she said. "I think there's a huge challenge ahead of the (Australian) government to in any way address the concerns of the Australian community."

She said the whole international live export trade should have been banned in 2006 when she exposed a slaughterhouse in Cairo restraining Australian cattle by cutting leg tendons. Australia responded then by suspending exports to Egypt for seven months.

Australian livestock industry advocates, Meat and Livestock Australia and LiveCorp., said in a statement they understood the reasons for the suspension, but feared it would be a disaster for cattle ranchers.

Cattle sales agent Tim McHugh said the suspension would take a huge economic toll on ranchers across northern Australia, where there are no export meat slaughterhouses.

"This is criminal to think that people can manipulate markets the way they have using emotive issues," McHugh told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

While most Australian abattoirs stun _ a process of rendering cattle temporarily unconscious with a device that causes a brain hemorrhage _ before slaughtering, stunning is rare in Indonesia and considered contrary to Islam by many.

Indonesia's methods of slaughtering animals are based on Islamic teachings, For Riwantoro, a senior official at Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture, told The Associated Press last week.

"We have to protect consumers by ensuring they consume not only healthy and clean meat, but most important, it must be halal," Riwantoro said.

A halal designation means a product complies with Islamic principles of hygiene and humane treatment of animals, and other rules involving the production processes.

Predominantly Muslim Malaysia temporarily banned Australian chilled beef imports while a debate raged over whether stunning violated Islam's rules on humane slaughter.

The Netherlands, meanwhile, is considering a ban on procedures that make meat kosher for Jews or halal for Muslims which critics say inflict unacceptable suffering on animals.

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Associated Press Writer Niniek Karmini contributed from Jakarta.