On February 11th 2024, hidden cameras installed by investigators from FTP at a Victorian piggery caught a worker r*ping a female pig (sow) who was confined in a farrowing crate.
Just minutes after others have left the building and the lights have been turned off, the worker is seen approaching the sow and beginning to penetrate her with his hands. He then pulls down his pants and proceeds to r*pe her for several minutes.
This horrific act should never have happened, and we need urgent action from the government to make sure it never happens again.
SNAP ACTION
Write to the government urgently and demand that they:
Introduce mandatory, publicly accessible CCTV in all Victorian farms and slaughterhouses
If it weren’t for the work of investigators installing covert cameras to capture animal cruelty, this depraved act may have never been discovered. All facilities that breed, confine and kill animals should have publicly accessible CCTV installed to allow complete transparency of their operations and to prevent what we have uncovered from ever happening again.
Ban the use of sow and farrowing crates in Victorian piggeries
The extreme confinement of pigs has been long protested as one of the most clear forms of animal abuse which is still legal in Australia. This new footage shows exactly how vulnerable these sows are while they are kept for weeks inside cages barely bigger than their own bodies. The Australian pork industry has shown that they have no capacity to enforce a self-imposed ban. The government must urgently step in and end these cruel contraptions for good.
Throw out the proposed new biosecurity bill
The government has recently introduced a new biosecurity bill which introduces increased penalties for animal cruelty whistleblowers who enter farms and slaughterhouses and capture footage of animal cruelty. This new bill has nothing to do with biosecurity. It is an attempt to protect the secrecy of animal slaughter industries and will act to prevent investigations like the one that uncovered this sickening act.
Remove outdated exemptions from the Crimes Act which allow the sexual penetration of animals for purposes of animal agriculture
While the penetration of this sow with the man’s genitals is illegal, he first penetrated her with his fingers, which currently is not considered illegal. We are joining with Georgie Purcell and the Animal Justice Party to call on the government to:
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Classify all sexual penetration of animals as illegal bestiality.
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Criminalise all sexual touching of animals, not only penetration.
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Criminalise the dissemination and possessing of bestiality content, not only the capturing of it for sexual pleasure.
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Remove all exemptions to bestiality laws which permit sexual exploitation as part of ‘standard industry practice’ like breeding and artificial insemination.
If workers were not legally allowed to sexually manipulate and exploit farmed animals, the illegal r*pe of this pig may never have happened.
