‘Disturbing’ footage shows Australian cattle mistreated in Indonesian abattoirs (VIDEO)
The Animals Australia rights group hired an Indonesian investigator to get the footage showing Australian live exports being mistreated in two Jakarta abattoirs. It was broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Lateline program.
MELBOURNE, Australia — New footage showing what are believed to be Australian cattle being brutally mistreated in Indonesian abattoirs has been broadcast on Australian television.
The images were obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline program, and show workers at the Timur Petir and Cakung abattoirs in Jakarta cutting up animals while still alive.
In other scenes the workers slit the throats of cattle without stunning them first.
The footage was shot in January by an Indonesian investigator hired by the animal rights group, Animals Australia.
"This latest footage reveals that workers can't even be relied upon not to start cutting up Australian animals before they are dead," she said.
The chief scientist for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in Australia, Bidda Jones, says she identified 46 potential breaches of the Australian Government's new code.
"These animals weren't stunned; they were slaughtered just in the way that was shown on Four Corners last year. The door opens, the animal trips and falls onto its side, it tries to gets up, takes a long time before it's held down for the throat cut, and the animals take a long time to die. It's an extremely distressing thing to watch and no Australian animal should be subjected to this treatment," she said.
The Australian newspaper says that officials from Australia's Department of Agriculture are examining the footage to establish if the cattle are Australian and if the slaughterhouses are part of its approved abattoir system.
In 2011, live cattle exports from Australia were banned for two months after another program, Four Corners, aired footage showing the mistreatment of cattle in Indonesian abattoirs. Trade resumed only after strict, new guidelines were introduced to protect animals exported to foreign abattoirs.
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Following the Lateline report, the Greens Party has renewed calls for a ban on live exports saying its the only way to end "cruel slaughter practices", the Herald Sun reports.
Live Exports Council CEO Alison Penfold dismissed Senator Rhiannon's comments as naive, the newspaper says, but admitted the footage was distressing.
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