In the town of Coominya, one of QLD’s largest ‘beef’ and ‘veal’ slaughterhouses, Greenmountain, rises from a sprawling sea of feedlot style holding pens. Each pen is filled with wary cows, some of which nurse calves as they stand in the shadow of the abattoir. At night, dingoes can be found prowling the pens, occasionally tearing at bodies of dead or dying animals or watching from a distance as the cows attempt to rest in the barren pens. Bordering the pens lies a pile of dead cows, bloated from the heat and lying in a river of blood. A further pile consists of bones, with whole skulls peeking out from a veil of dirt and shrivelled skin. The air is fetid and heavy, filled with the gentle sounds of cows and the loud hum of machinery.
For just one week in late 2024, Farm Transparency Project investigators installed hidden cameras at Greenmountain, seeking to understand and challenge their claims to uphold the ‘world’s best practice’ in sustainability and exceed animal welfare expectations.
Our cameras revealed:
- Excessive – almost exclusive – use of a painful electric prodder to move cattle from the race to the knockbox, including occasional use on the face and anus and when the animals have nowhere to move to, and frequently leading to clear vocalisations indicating significant pain
- Workers kicking cows
- Regular closing of race doors on the heads, necks and bodies of cows
- Downed cows in the race being repeatedly jabbed with the electric prodder; other cows being moved over the top of them; shot with a bolt-gun in the race and winched through to the kill floor
- Cows displaying signs of consciousness after stunning, including breathing, blinking, and responding to sticking; sometimes the blinking and breathing continues after sticking. In some cases workers clearly notice this by performing an eye reflex test, but make no attempt to re-stun the animal.
