Who controls trespass footage? Here’s what the High Court’s answer means for animals – and press freedom

Résumé détaillé

The High Court’s landmark decision will dictate when secretly recorded footage can be published, including by journalists, advocates and whistleblowers.

Who gets to see what happens in slaughterhouses? The answer is: officials, sometimes, but almost never the public.

But on the facts of this case, the activists who trespassed to film the video were ordered to destroy their copies.

This case has broad-reaching ramifications well beyond animal welfare concerns, but the court’s verdict is complicated. Here’s what the court found and why it matters for whistleblowers, media freedom and the regulation of abattoirs across the country.

Industry bodies dominate the creation of codes of conduct that govern slaughter. Export abattoirs are overseen by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, which is also responsible for the industry’s productivity — a potential conflict of interest the Productivity Commission flagged in 2016 when it recommended an independent animal welfare body.

In practice, many of the biggest animal welfare scandals have been exposed by activists rather than regulators, with the former either tipping off journalists or publishing footage themselves.

This includes revelations surrounding live export, the 2015 greyhound live-baiting scandal, and the 2023 footage of pigs being gassed before slaughter, a standard industry practice.

So when activists secretly filmed inside a Victorian slaughterhouse, the question of who could see that footage became a high stakes legal battle landing in the High Court.

The appellant, Farm Transparency International, is an animal advocacy group that seeks to “force industry transparency and educate consumers” about routine practices in animal agriculture.

People acting for Farm Transparency trespassed seven times on Game Meats Company’s slaughterhouse in 2024 to install, and later retrieve, hidden cameras.

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