By Olivia McInnes

Many were abhorred by the graphic and confronting footage shown on ABC’s Lateline recently showing unnecessary cruelty towards livestock prior to slaughter at Hawkesbury Valley Abattoir in North Sydney.

Filmed over six days undercover the footage shows pigs being dragged onto the sticking table and being belted repeatedly with an iron bar.

Slaughter practice laws stipulates that the pigs should be rendered unconscious with a stunner before their throats are cut, but the footage clearly shows that it has not been done properly in a number of incidences.

On one occasion a pig’s head was pummelled with the bar seven times and a minute later the same worker beats  another pig over the head 13 times.

The abattoir has since been closed and a full investigation into its slaughter practices are currently being conducted.

The authorities are labelling the abattoir as a ‘rogue operator’ while Animal Liberation’s Emma Hurst is calling for CCTV cameras to be installed inside all abattoirs to help prevent this kind of abuse.

She says a regulator should assess footage periodically to ensure animal abuse doesn’t happen.

“It’s absolutely hideous. Last year we saw footage from the live exports of cattle to Indonesia and some of the most horrific scenes that we saw in that footage was of cattle being slaughtered while fully conscious, and here in Australia at this abattoir we are seeing the same thing happen,” she said.

Daryl Nairn of Condo Quality Meats says as a retailer of meat products, he finds it disgusting that this sort of thing is going on.

“Apart from the cruelty, things like that also affect the end meat product as if an animal is stressed to that point just prior to killing, it’s going to reduce the quality of meat with increased toughness and bruising,” he said.

Local feedlot owner and beef producer Tony Slade, says that the feedlot industry has a very stringent code of practices and is highly regulated to avoid these kind of incidents.

“Livestock have to be treated humanely. I love my animals and am very surprised that anyone could treat them like that. I was disgusted in the four corners program last year about live cattle being exported to Indonesia.

Tony said that it is unfortunately the producer who bears the brunt of incidences like these, as they are the ones being penalised when an abattoir has to be shut down because of someone else’s wrong doing.

“We can’t have overregulation, but somehow we have to stamp these bad people out,” he said.