Activists with secret cameras spark slaughterhouse investigation

Warning: This story contains distressing content about the slaughter of animals. It also includes images that show blood.

The meatworker has the stun gun poised but the sheep is too quick.

It jumps right into the kill zone, where it slips over on the blood of other sheep, whose carcasses hang nearby.

The slaughterer looks at the fully conscious animal then plunges his knife twice into its hindquarters.

The distressed sheep somehow scrambles to its feet but is held in place by other meatworkers as the slaughterer sharpens his blade.

He pulls the sheep into a headlock, wrestles it onto its back, and starts hacking at its neck.

It takes nine hacks to behead the sheep, which writhes until its spinal cord is finally cut.

The slaughterer throws its severed head on the floor with the others, as the next sheep in line looks on.

“Any abattoir video is going to be disturbing to the layperson,” says Alastair McDougall, a Brisbane barrister who’s prosecuted animal cruelty cases.

“But having watched that video, it is very disturbing.

“If that is the way that animals are being slaughtered, it needs to stop because in my respectful view, there’s an element of cruelty in that process.

“[And] if it’s cruel, it’s a criminal offence.”

Regulator reviews secret footage

The scene at Carey Brothers abattoir in southern Queensland has come to light only because of an animal rights group that governments wanted to shut down.

The Farm Transparency Project (FTP), declared then federal Agriculture minister David Littleproud in 2020, had “no place in society”.

Five years later, the activists have sparked a Queensland government investigation into alleged animal cruelty in slaughterhouses, including in Mr Littleproud’s own electorate.

The ABC can reveal that Biosecurity Queensland investigators have obtained hundreds of hours of raw, unedited footage captured by the project with a view to using it as potential evidence in any future criminal prosecution.

The project alleges the cameras it placed in seven southern Queensland slaughterhouses in August and September last year recorded multiple breaches of state and federal laws.

The ABC has viewed footage from each slaughterhouse, and because of its distressing nature, included only still photographs here.

Four of the slaughterhouses are in Mr Littleproud’s electorate of Maranoa.

“David Littleproud should maybe have a bit more of an eye on his community and what’s happening right under his nose, rather than being critical of the only people who are investigating and exposing what is happening to animals in Australia,” FTP campaign director Harley McDonald-Eckersall says.

Mr Littleproud told the ABC in a statement that “any breach of animal welfare standards is serious and should be investigated by the relevant authorities”.

Two of the slaughterhouses received state taxpayer-funded upgrades in 2020, including Carey Brothers, which received $250,000.

Carey Brothers did not respond to questions by the ABC.

Ms McDonald-Eckersall says not all slaughterhouses had their own CCTV as legally required — but for the ones that did, “the reality is that no one’s checking that footage”.

“We know that because if anyone was, they would have seen us going in and installing our cameras, sometimes directly in front of their own CCTV cameras.”

Activist footage from all seven abattoirs shows examples of animals remaining conscious during slaughter, where stunning — a legal requirement to ensure animals feel no pain — was ineffective or not done.

Mr McDougall says this is contrary to “the methodology behind the legislation… that the slaughter is supposed to be as quick and as humane as possible”.

And courts might see the slaughter of live animals in plain sight of dead carcasses as “a form of cruelty in itself”, he says.

Major suppliers, grant recipients under investigation

At Greenmountain Slaughterhouse at Coominya, one of Queensland’s largest beef abattoirs and an accredited supplier to McDonald’s and Woolworths, cows were breathing and blinking after their throats were cut.

Workers picked this up in eye tests but did not re-stun the animals.

Greenmountain did not respond to questions from the ABC by deadline.

At Crows Nest Slaughterhouse, whose owner the RSPCA previously wanted banned form the industry, animals remained conscious, blinking and trying to sit up, for minutes after their throats were slit.

Owner Lindsay William Taylor in 2013 was hit with the state’s largest fine for breaching duty of animal care at a goat abattoir, in what Mr McDougall, who prosecuted the case, says were “horrific circumstances”.

Taylor declined to comment.

At Millmerran Abattoirs, pigs and other animals were shown thrashing and gasping during slaughter.

The business, which received a $140,000 state grant in 2020, did not respond to questions from the ABC.

At Brisbane Valley Meats at Esk, a worker slit the throat of a pig without stunning, as it struggled to its death.

Cows also struggled and lifted their heads while their throats were slit.

The abattoir did not respond to questions from the ABC.

At Maclagan Meats, animals showed signs of consciousness after their throats were slit, with pigs gasping for air and cows thrashing and lifting their heads while suspended on a shackle line.

The business did not respond to questions from the ABC.

Footage inside Steve’s Country Kills at Chinchilla shows cows continuing to thrash after they were stunned and had their throats slit, and then being shot in the head with bolts multiple times.

Owner Steve Long says he is unaware of any animals showing signs of consciousness during slaughter at his abattoir.

“My staff are all trained — I do not take that very lightly at all,” he says.

Mr Long, whose business was awarded Queensland meat processor of 2023 by the Australian Meat Industry Council, says he took action last year after internal CCTV caught a worker throwing a lamb against a wall.

The lamb was not seriously injured but “as soon as I saw that, and I had the evidence to prove it, I sacked him on the spot”, he says.

“I will not tolerate anything that is not done correctly and humanely.”

Illegally-obtained footage can be used in court

The project submitted formal complaints to Queensland’s Department of Primary Industries in December.

Last month it shared the full footage with Biosecurity Queensland, whose senior investigator asked the vision be kept “secured and unredacted / unedited in the event any prosecutorial process requires the original footage”.

A spokesman for the department says it is “investigating complaints received from the Farm Transparency Project alleging animal welfare offences at seven Queensland abattoirs last year”.

“As this matter is currently under investigation, we cannot provide any further comment at this time.”

FTP, previously known as Aussie Farms, came under political attack amid pressure from the meat industry after its website published farmers’ addresses in 2019.

The federal government introduced jail time of up to five years for anyone using a website to promote farm trespass.

The group’s charity status was revoked and an activist’s mother, a senior federal government bureaucrat, was sanctioned over the use of her ABN to register the group’s website.

And federal and state governments introduced tougher fines and jail time for trespassing on farmland.

But this hasn’t stopped the activists from providing authorities with potential evidence of animal cruelty.

Mr McDougall, the barrister, says footage obtained illegally by trespass can be admitted as evidence in court — as it was in the 2016 prosecution of greyhound trainer Tom Noble.

Once admitted, a video is “pretty hard to challenge”, he says.

Mr McDougall says while slaughterhouses are legally required to keep CCTV recordings, the system relies on self-reporting.

“An abattoir is hardly likely to hand over and disclose to a law enforcement agency, with a view to being prosecuted, evidence that is going to be incriminatory, are they?” he says.