• Footage captured last month by Farm Transparency Project shows a worker at a Victorian piggery raping a female pig (sow) who is confined in a farrowing crate.
• The footage, aired exclusively on ABC's 7.30 program, was captured accidentally by the group, who set out to expose routine animal cruelty ahead of the public hearings for the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into pig welfare, which begin tomorrow (Tue 12 March) in Melbourne.
• Investigators who captured the footage have said that they were taken completely by surprise by the sickening act, which they reported to authorities as soon as they could. The group have also released footage from the same facility showing newborn piglets being bashed to death and having their tails cut off without pain relief.

Left: A worker rapes a caged sow. Right: A worker bashes a piglet against the floor.

Photos and footage: https://www.farmtransparency.org/facilities/f41a6-midland-bacon 

Almost exactly a year after the Farm Transparency Project released groundbreaking footage of pigs being painfully gassed to death inside three Victorian pig slaughterhouses, the controversial group have captured “shocking and sickening” footage of a worker committing bestiality in the breeding shed at a Victorian piggery, Midland Bacon in Carag Carag. The footage was aired tonight in an exclusive report by ABC's 7.30, as well as being published, heavily censored, on the group's website. Farm Transparency Project has also shared other vision from the same facility of routine, legal practices, including the brutal killing of 'runt' or weak newborn piglets by bashing their heads against a concrete floor, and the cutting of the teeth, ears and tails of piglets without any form of anaesthetic or pain relief.

The disturbing footage was captured last month by hidden cameras installed at Midland Bacon pig farm in Carag Carag, Victoria. A worker is seen on camera approaching a sow as she stands confined in a farrowing crate. He appears to initially penetrate her with his hand, before pulling down his pants and penetrating her with his genitals, while looking around furtively. The depraved act continues for minutes before the worker is seen walking back down the aisle and exiting the piggery. 

The footage from Midland Bacon will be shared tomorrow morning (Tue 12 March) in a public hearing for the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into pig welfare, which was initiated last year after the release of the footage of pigs being gassed to death. 

Strategy & Campaigns Director at Farm Transparency Project, Harley McDonald-Eckersall, said that she was incredibly disturbed by the footage uncovered by their team of investigators, but that she was ultimately unsurprised by what had been captured.

 "The reality is that sows are forcefully inseminated and impregnated by workers multiple times across their lives. Piggery workers are trained in how to manually trigger arousal in a sow by rubbing her vulva, before inserting a tube full of semen into her vagina. Whether this worker was drawn to this job because of existing desires to exploit animals, or whether these impulses developed due to his work in this intensive pig farm we may never know. What we captured at Midland Bacon is the sickening, inevitable outcome of the normalisation of sexual abuse."

 One of the investigators who captured the footage, Siena Callander, says that she was shocked and horrified by what their cameras had captured.

 “We had been investigating the piggery for a while, hoping to capture routine procedures such as the mutilation and killing of newborn piglets by blunt-force trauma. When we came across this footage, we were absolutely horrified. Pigs are known to have the intelligence of a three-year old child. The terror she must have felt while having this done to her, trapped and unable to move, is painful to think about.”

 McDonald-Eckersall says that they immediately provided the footage to police and hope the worker will be prosecuted, however that this will do little to address the culture of systemic violence and exploitation which is inherent to the Victorian pig meat industry.

 “The fact that this has happened at all, in the midst of a parliamentary inquiry into the pig industry, is incredibly indicative of exactly how broken this industry is. Many people have informed us that our footage of pigs dying in gas chambers has caused them to stop eating pig products entirely. We hope that this footage will encourage the same behaviour. The only way to fix this industry is to end it.”

Farm Transparency Project understands that a 30-year-old employee of Midland Bacon has been arrested and charged in relation to the incident.