TRANSCRIPT
It's a long-delayed initiative - finally coming into fruition.
After sustained lobbying by animal welfare activists, Australian meatworks will be required to video-record their operations.
It will only apply to meatworks certified under the industry's welfare certification scheme.
Patrick Hutchinson is the Chief Executive of the Australian Meat Industry Council.
"The process that we'll be going through will be utilised only by the facility that is under our Australian Animal Welfare Certification scheme. They'll be utilising that in a way that allows them to train and educate their staff, but it'll also be about assisting with the audits that they would receive. It's education. It's about training, but it also is about ensuring that our customers are confident in the process that we have in place."
Scientific Officer for Farm Animals at the RSPCA, Sarah Babington, has welcomed the decision.
"This has kind of been a progressive decision over lots and lots of conversations but ultimately we congratulate AMIC on taking the step forward and we look forward to work with them on how it'll be implemented."
Last year, animal activists from Farm Transparency Project installed secret cameras at slaughterhouses in Tasmania.
Exposing the brutal treatment of animals in the facilities and leading to increased demand for transparency.
Mr Hutchinson says most facilities do the right thing.
"What we really want to see is state governments start to actually come forward with us and raise the bar. Anti meat groups who are legally invading those facilities. None of them are our members, nor are they part of this system. They purely operate under state legislation. We want to see state legislation come up to the bar with us and in order to ensure that livestock are being protected, because that is the most important thing for this process for us."
But Jed Goodfellow from the Australian Alliance for Animals says that's not good enough.
"I don't think this can be made out to be a matter of a few small bad apples. The volume of the evidence of the footage that has been received over the last several years demonstrates that this is a widespread industry problem. The industry marking its own homework is just not going to cut it here. We need to have real transparency and that is allowing state and federal regulators access to the footage so they can monitor compliance."
Under the new program, processors will have to film livestock handling processes from the moment animals arrive at a facility until the point of slaughter.
It's a move which Patrick Hutchinson says proves their standards are constantly evolving.
"I think what we're showing is our transparency is about working with government to show them our standards are always evolving. This is not a revolution, its an evolution, our continual aim to meet our customer's requirements because that's the most important thing."
But animal advocacy groups say this isn't enough, describing the move as self-regulation.
Sarah Babington says the council should support the requirement becoming a law.
"Obviously this is a great step to have it as a requirement under the industry animal welfare standards but RSPCA Australia also encourages CCTV to be a mandated minimum welfare requirement across Australia in all establishments."
Meatworks under the council will have to install CCTV by 2026.
