Reporter: Sarah Ferguson and Michael Doyle

Date: 30/05/2011

KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: Welcome to Four Corners.

Tonight we present a program that will shock you. Some people are bound to find parts of it difficult to watch, as indeed I did. But this is a story that demands to be seen and heard.

We’re shining the spotlight tonight on the live cattle trade to Indonesia, because without doubt very large numbers of Australian cattle exported there have been subjected to gross, horrible abuse.

The live animal export industry has been forced to confront this issue before. In 2006, the trade to Egypt was stopped following an investigation by the activist group Animals Australia, which revealed unacceptable abuse.

The Australian livestock export industry and the Government say they've achieved some improvement in the way cattle are slaughtered in Indonesia. But the evidence you will see and hear tonight makes it overwhelmingly clear that such efforts by Australia have fallen well short of what any reasonable person might expect in the process of slaughtering animals for food.

Animals Australia has again been responsible evidence-gathering in Indonesia. Four Corners has built on that evidence with its own investigation. The shocking abuse of Australian cattle in Indonesia was not hard to find.

Aware that we were working on this story and having been shown the footage you’re about to see, the industry scrambled last week to take action and control the damage. They at least have agreed to be interviewed. The Minister for Agriculture, Joe Ludwig has not.

The story now from Sarah Ferguson.

SARAH FERGUSON, REPORTER: At the docks in Darwin, 13,000 Australian cattle begin their journey to Indonesian slaughter houses to be killed.

With little commotion, they’re moved up ramps onto the massive cattle ship the Ocean Drover.

CAMERON HALL, CEO, LIVECORP: If you try and force them too hard that's when the animals will become more stressed and we don't want any of those sorts of stresses going on.

SARAH FERGUSON: Over two decades 6.5 million Australian cattle have made the same journey to slaughter in Indonesia - an industry now worth $300 million a year.

CAMERON HALL: I think we're still talking very good times ahead in the live cattle trade to Indonesia. A market at the moment that's taking half a million cattle a year is still a very good market.

SARAH FERGUSON: These are Brahman cattle, bred on stations across the Top End. At this stage in the journey their welfare is paramount.

Evidence of lack of care, illness, deaths at sea, cruelty in handling could cripple the lucrative industry.

CAMERON HALL: Well above 99 per cent of all animals loaded arrive fit and well into the marketplace destinations.

SARAH FERGUSON: Once in Indonesia they’ll be fattened in feedlots then sold to butchers and onto markets. Since few Indonesians have access to refrigeration they prefer their meat fresh from the slaughter.

Some of the cattle shipped to Indonesia will die humanely, stunned before slaughter in conditions similar to those in Australia. Most will not.

These are the pictures the cattle industry doesn’t want you to see. The cruelty and suffering of Australian animals repeated in traditional abattoirs across Indonesia.

It’s sometimes said that in years to come we will look back with the same horror at the way we treated animals as we do now at the human slave trade.

Whether that’s true or not, scenes like this are likely to turn the stomach of the most hardened observer.

I’d seen gruesome pictures of this place before we came here but actually being here with the smell of blood and fear is almost totally overwhelming. The noise of those terrified animals makes you wonder how the Australian cattle industry could support an operation like this but also how the Australian taxpayer could be helping to pay for it.

CAMERON HALL: The scenes that we've seen are graphic and are disturbing and the Australian industry has animal welfare of at its forefront and it is its most important priority.

SARAH FERGUSON: Key members of the cattle industry are openly anxious that the truth about the abattoirs may be exposed to a wider audience.

LUKE BOWEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NT CATTLEMEN’S ASSOC.: It's not something that you then open to the rest of the world and say look we've got a, we've got a problem we have to overcome because there's natural sensitivities with it. So the industry has been labouring internally to overcome what are some pretty significant challenges within a very complex environment in Indonesia.

SARAH FERGUSON: After a long summer of rain, business on Australia’s northern cattle stations is booming.

The rains have ensured plentiful food and the demand for beef overseas has sent the price soaring.

Newcastle Waters in the Northern Territory is the showcase property of the Consolidated Pastoral Company.

KEN WARRINER, CHAIRMAN & CEO, CONSOLIDATED PASTORAL COMPANY: We've been here for, as I say 30 years and still spending millions most years on it.

SARAH FERGUSON: The company expanded as the live cattle trade grew.

KEN WARRINER: We started going into Malaysia and the Philippines and probably going to Indonesia 15, 18 years.

SARAH FERGUSON: So Indonesia's really essential for you?

KEN WARRINER: Yeah, Indonesia really is our key market player by a long way.

SARAH FERGUSON: Ken Warriner was Kerry Packer’s partner in the cattle business for more than 20 years.

Consolidated Pastoral owns 19 prime stations covering more than 5.5 million hectares across the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia.

In 2009 the Packers sold their share to a British equity firm for over $400 million with Warriner retaining 10 per cent. Part of the deal was that Warriner would stay hands on running the cattle.

KEN WARRINER: That's a good Brahman there, she's got plenty of meat, plenty of room to hang meat off her. As I was saying before, they're very quiet, they're very intelligent and they learn to respect people quickly and they learn to disrespect them if they're treated unkindly.

SARAH FERGUSON: Do you like them?

KEN WARRINER: Yeah, I like them a lot, yeah.

SARAH FERGUSON: Ken Warriner is considered a guru in the industry for his lifetime of success breeding and managing cattle.

(To Ken Warriner) Would you tolerate cruelty to any of your animals?

KEN WARRINER: Here? No. Oh no, they're made very clear in their induction that any cruelty will not be tolerated and...

SARAH FERGUSON: So why would you tolerate it when they're in Indonesia?

KEN WARRINER: Because I think it's going to take time to get there.

SARAH FERGUSON: Warriner first saw the conditions in Indonesia for himself in 2002.

KEN WARRINER: It was pretty bad. We were very, very disappointed in what we saw - the way they handled the cattle, the way they knocked them down, how they did their halal kill.

SARAH FERGUSON: Since then he has been part of the cattle industry’s efforts to change slaughter techniques.

KEN WARRINER: I think that's cut it back from being I don't know how long it took then to kill them but it certainly cut back the time. Our mentality is we've got to get these, you know stunning guns in soon as we can.

SARAH FERGUSON: You've known about the situation in the abattoirs for more than 10 years. Isn't that just too slow to improve suffering of that of that magnitude?

KEN WARRINER: Yeah, I'd agree with that, absolutely, totally agree with that. We didn't think for a minute eight or 10 years ago that this was going to be eight or 10 years to get this right.

SARAH FERGUSON: Luke Bowen represents the interests of cattle farmers across the Northern Territory.

LUKE BOWEN: I've taken producers into slaughterhouses in Indonesia. We expect, we in Australia expect that animals should be slaughtered quickly and speed and efficiency is what it's about. When you don't get that, that is, we find it unbearable, we find it confronting.

SARAH FERGUSON: Last year Rohan Sullivan went with him to see how the slaughter was done.

ROHAN SULLIVAN, PRESIDENT, NT CATTLEMEN’S ASSOCIATION: Look I wouldn’t say I was happy with it. It takes a bit long and I guess the other thing is that the animal's still conscious.

SARAH FERGUSON: Sullivan runs a small operation of 36,000 hectares. Five hundred of his cattle were part of the shipment that went to Indonesia on the Ocean Drover”

ROHAN SULLIVAN: We didn't know when the next boat would be going so yeah, we were keen to get them out.

SARAH FERGUSON: He’s not happy about how his animals will be killed but nor can he afford to stop sending them.

ROHAN SULLIVAN: We need to be moving towards stunning as, as the, as our ultimate goal, but recognising that there are some, there are... well it's going to take time and that we need to be we need to be a bit patient about it because there's lots of reasons why stunning is not going to be taken up straight away.

SARAH FERGUSON: You say we've got to have patience but why should the animals suffer while we help Indonesia get its act together on stunning?

ROHAN SULLIVAN: Because I think that um... (Long pause).

SARAH FERGUSON: It's a tough question isn't it?

ROHAN SULLIVAN: Yes, it is.

SARAH FERGUSON: While the cattlemen struggle with their consciences, one woman has been determined to let the public know what’s going on in Indonesia.

A former policewoman, Lyn White is now using her investigative skills for the welfare group Animals Australia. For the last seven years she’s been focusing on the Australian live export trade.

LYN WHITE, ANIMALS AUSTRALIA: I didn’t think that I could ever see anything worse than I have witnessed in the Middle East.

SARAH FERGUSON: In 2006 she brought the live cattle trade to Egypt to a standstill with footage she obtained of Australian animals being mistreated in Cairo.

LYN WHITE: We’d assumed that because there were greater levels of industry involvement in Indonesia, the treatment of livestock would have been better but we couldn’t have been more wrong.

SARAH FERGUSON: In March this year, White came to Indonesia to track down abattoirs where Australian animals are killed. She filmed in 11 different abattoirs across the country.

LYN WHITE: All I could think of was the importance of gathering the evidence. We have an industry, a live export trade that has thrived on the fact that where they send animals they know that Australian eyes are not going to be seeing what occurs.

SARAH FERGUSON: On her first night she and a colleague filmed a gruesome scene at an abattoir in Bayur, Jakarta.

The workers here had no objection to them filming. The slaughtermen here are trained by the Australian industry and use Australian equipment.

They nervously try to manoeuvre the animal into position to slit its throat.

LYN WHITE: I actually thought at that moment, after being in an Indonesian abattoir for five minutes that we had the evidence necessary to stop the trade to Indonesia.

SARAH FERGUSON: This is supposed to be slaughter according to Islamic law - the throat cut with one clean stroke but here it’s done with a rough sawing action.

The cut half severs the head but doesn’t kill the animal.

LYN WHITE: It’s slid off the concrete slab onto the ground, got onto its knees, regained its feet with its throat gaping and blood pouring from its throat. And then it ended up charging towards me with its throat cut. It was just appalling.

SARAH FERGUSON: To stop it getting up again, the slaughterman slashes the tendon on its rear leg.

Later that night, having filmed a succession of similarly cruel scenes, White sent her first report to her colleagues in Australia.

EXCERPT FROM EMAIL BY LYN WHITE: It’s 3am. Have now washed clothes and shoes in the bath. We are still quite shaken by the scale of suffering...

DR BIDDA JONES, CHIEF SCIENTIST, RSPCA AUSTRALIA: I don't know how she can do it. I really don't. I mean this is this is incredibly difficult.

SARAH FERGUSON: Bidda Jones is the chief scientist of the RSPCA. It was her job to analyse the footage.

BIDDA JONES: This steer is vocalising a lot at this point. The tongue is coming out, so clearly distressed. You can see from his eye that he's distressed. These are all behaviours that are indicative of fear, anxiety, distress.

SARAH FERGUSON: For the first time RSPCA and Animals Australia are working on a joint campaign to end the live trade of cattle to Indonesia.

BIDDA JONES: Nobody can condone this sort of treatment. It can't be allowed to continue

LYN WHITE: Obviously for cattle to even be remotely slaughtered humanely, they need to be stunned unconscious first. But we would still say that the live trade should not continue. We should be killing the animals here under Australian conditions, under our control, and then they should only be shipped as meat products, not live animals.

SARAH FERGUSON: Thousands of Australian animals have gone through this abattoir on the outskirts of Jakarta.

Gondrong abattoir has been well known to the Australian cattle industry for over a decade.

Up to 60 animals are killed here every night, skinned and chopped up on the slaughterhouse floor.

The buyers know Australian meat is popular at the market.

ABDUL ROZAK, MEAT BUYER (translated): Australian beef is thicker and tenderer with smaller bones. It’s better for meatballs than local meat.

SARAH FERGUSON: The traditional method of slaughter is to rope and pull down the animal in the middle of the floor but Australian cattle are bigger and much harder to handle than local animals.

In 2000 the industry groups Meat and Livestock Australia and LiveCorp commissioned the design of a metal restraining box.

Using levies from cattle farmers they installed 109 of these across Indonesia. Since 2004 the project has also been funded by the Federal Government.

SARAH FERGUSON: So that’s one of the Australian boxes?

MUHAMMAD MUR HENDRI, GONDRONG ABATTOIR CO-OWNER: Australian box.

SARAH FERGUSON: This box was installed three years ago. Australian experts have been here six times in the last 14 months to train and advise the slaughtermen.

ANANG SUJANA, SLAUGHTERMAN (translated): The box is safer because you can secure the cow in it. If you don’t use the box the meat isn’t as good.

SARAH FERGUSON: Once inside the box, the animal’s feet are roped. The door opens and the frightened animal trips and falls on the wet concrete slab. Buckets of water thrown on the cattle make them rear up.

Across the room the sound of the steers hitting the concrete floor reverberates through the abattoir.

Did the MLA say it was OK to throw water at the animals?

NASIR IRAWAN, SLAUGHTERMAN (translated): Yes, spray them first so they’re wet.

CAMERON HALL: We don't condone the use of water, we don't think it's necessary and we're working with the people in the, in the market and the people in the abattoirs to remove that practice.

SARAH FERGUSON: So what does that tell you about how effective your training actually is?

CAMERON HALL: Look know that the training that we provide when it's fully adopted makes substantial changes. We will have an intensive training program at the Gondrong abattoir to...

SARAH FERGUSON: You've already had an intensive training program at the Gondrong abattoir. You've had six visits in 14 months. That did not achieve an acceptable outcome for Australian animals.

CAMERON HALL: Not every one of those, not every one of those visits was a training program.

SARAH FERGUSON: Outside in the holding pens, animals from different Australian cattle stations wait their turn.

Some still have their Australian ear tags. Wave Hill is a family owned station in the Northern Territory. Paraway belongs to the Macquarie Group. AAco is one of the biggest cattle companies in the world.

Whether from wealthy corporate stations or small family owned ones, inside the abattoir all animals are equal in their distress.

(To David Farley) Are you aware that that is the current situation for your animals?

DAVID FARLEY, CEO, AACO: I’m not aware where every animal ultimately is destined to, but as an industry I think the industry’s more than aware that the processing facilities in Indonesia are a challenge, that they have made headway as an industry.

SARAH FERGUSON: The suffering of the cattle witnessed at Gondrong was repeated in every abattoir visited by Four Corners and Animals Australia, more than a month apart.

Here Lyn White saw a series of animals bash their heads on the concrete.

LYN WHITE: I remember at the time so clearly saying each time oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. These animals were just about knocking themselves out. And to think that we had designed, that Australian industry had designed that. It couldn't have placed the animals at greater risk.

SARAH FERGUSON: It was Bidda Jones’ grim task was to assess the skill of the actual slaughter.

BIDDA JONES: It's terrible. I mean the average over the 49 animals that I've looked at the average is 10 cuts, 10 cuts, and some of them up to 33 cuts.

SARAH FERGUSON: And why? Why is it, is it just skill? Blunt knives? What is it?

BIDDA JONES: It's skill. It's blunt knives.

SARAH FERGUSON: How sharp is your knife

ANANG SUJANA (translation): Yeah I can show you

SARAH FERGUSON: Is it sharp?

ANANG SUJANA (translation): Yeah it’s sharp, sharp.

SARAH FERGUSON: Despite all the Australian training at Gondrong, many animals were still alive minutes after the throat cut. According to international rules on slaughter, they should be dead within 30 seconds.

BIDDA JONES: This one goes on for, for about three minutes. Exactly what he's experiencing we don't know but there's a very, very high likelihood that this is incredibly painful. If this animal is still conscious this should not be happening.

SARAH FERGUSON: Why not stop Australian animals going to the Gondrong abattoir?

CAMERON HALL: Look, in the Gondrong abattoir what we saw was poor handling, poor practices. Now we know...

SARAH FERGUSON: So you're happy, you're happy at Gondrong for animals to smash their heads on the concrete tonight, tomorrow night, the night after?

CAMERON HALL: We know that where the infrastructure that we put in place is used according to its design and where the training that we provide is fully adopted but the...

SARAH FERGUSON: Let me just repeat that question. You're happy for animals at Gondrong to smash their heads on the concrete tonight, tomorrow night, the night after?

CAMERON HALL: We, we know that poor practices have to be improved and that's what we are working hard in the marketplace to do.

(Excerpt from MLA promotional video)
JASON HATCHETT, MEAT AND LIVESTOCK AUSTRALIA: My name is Jason Hatchett, I work for Meat and Livestock Australia, and my main focus is to improve the welfare and conditions for Australian cattle here in Indonesia.
(End of excerpt)

SARAH FERGUSON: The Australian live export Industry has worked hard to defend its program in Indonesia.

(Excerpt continued)
JASON HATCHETT: The restraining box takes away all the risk involved when trying to restrain the Australian cattle, making it more efficient, effective, profitable and most of all reducing the stress levels to the cattle. 
(End of excerpt)

SARAH FERGUSON: Last year Meat and Livestock Australia commissioned a review of conditions for Australian cattle in Indonesia - including feedlots and abattoirs.

It was led by Professor Ivan Caple.

PROFESSOR IVAN CAPLE, FMR DEAN OF VET SCIENCE, UNI OF MELBOURNE: The reactions of the cattle told me that they weren't being abused - and cattle don't lie.

SARAH FERGUSON: Professor Caple’s report had a positive message.

EXCERPT FROM REPORT (voiceover) Australian cattle in Indonesia were typically comfortable... (and) generally found to be coping well with the conditions."

IVAN CAPLE: The welfare generally in Indonesia, our team was unanimous in saying generally the welfare conditions for Australian cattle in Indonesia is good.

SARAH FERGUSON: The expert team also visited Gondrong.

IVAN CAPLE: They were to the most proficient we saw using the control box. It was quite unbelievable how proficient they were.

SARAH FERGUSON: Were there any head slaps in Gondrong?

IVAN CAPLE: There were some, yeah. There were some.

SARAH FERGUSON: How does that square with efficient?

IVAN CAPLE: Ah well it doesn't really slow the process all that, that much because the slaughtermen can usually restrain the animal quite quickly to prevent the slapping.

SARAH FERGUSON: Doesn't it hurt though?

IVAN CAPLE: Ah I don't know.

SARAH FERGUSON: The report did say there were instances of poor animal welfare in the abattoirs.

IVAN CAPLE: A couple of the handlers were a little bit exuberant with the use of a goad and a very long pointy stick. Sometimes a finger was in an eye socket. That's not required. All of those issues can be picked up by a trainer.

SARAH FERGUSON: Six days after leaving Darwin, the Ocean Drover has arrived in Bandar Lampung, Sumatra.

Beef in Indonesia is eaten principally on the large islands of Java and Sumatra so that is where the Australian animals go.

Two thousand seven hundred cattle from the ship have been trucked to the Juang Jaya feedlot outside Bandar Lampung - co-owned by the Consolidated Pastoral Company.

KEN WARRINER: The feedlots itself, it's an absolute pleasure to go there now. You never see a beast slip over or run around. They're all quiet and you know they're all covered.

GREG PANKHURST, DIRECTOR, JUANG JAYA FEEDLOT: Feedlotters from around the world come here and say, Greg and Dicky, you have a five star resort here, you have a five star resort for animals.

SARAH FERGUSON: Greg Pankhurst has worked with cattle in Indonesia for 20 years. It’s taken nine years and millions of dollars to establish the standards at this feedlot.

GREG PANKHURST: I don’t like to see my animals treated wrongly and I have total control of what happens in here and my cattle here in inside here are treated 100 per cent.

SARAH FERGUSON: Beyond the feedlot in the abattoirs, Pankhurst says conditions have also improved.

GREG PANKHURST: The biggest thing that I have changed, have seen over the last 19 years that I have here, is the way that the animal is restrained and that is a very big welfare issue, the restraint of the animal. The animal is not, is not forced or pressured. Previously it was forced or pressured, now it's not forced or pressured.

SARAH FERGUSON: But just a few kilometres away in Bandar Lampung, at the end of narrow road in a backyard, is the Kaliawi abattoir. Here there is little sign of progress.

When Animals Australia came in March, they found animals bearing the distinctive wine glass tag of the Consolidated Pastoral Company. These cattle had come from the Juang Jaya feedlot.

LYN WHITE: They had no capacity whatsoever to get the animals from the holding pen into the box. To walk in there and see a mark one box with LiveCorp and MLA written on it was just astonishing.

Four Corners sent the abattoir footage to the world’s leading authority on cattle behaviour, Dr Temple Grandin.

She was blunt about the industry’s assessment that conditions were “generally good”.

DR TEMPLE GRANDIN, ANIMAL SCIENCES, COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY: That is, well it's bullshit. I don't know if you're allowed to say that on Australian TV or not. To say that that's generally good, that is just totally wrong.

(Speaking at a meeting of Australian cattle producers) Animals that have only been handled on horseback can be exceedingly dangerous to handle on foot because they're not...

SARAH FERGUSON: Temple Grandin is not an animal activist. She’s an advisor to the cattle industry.

CAMERON HALL: Temple Grandin's well known around the world. A number of her principles around yard design and movement of animals have been adopted through the, through the cattle industry in Australia and through the, through the training programs that we provide.

TEMPLE GRANDIN (Speaking at a meeting of Australian cattle producers): I want to go over some cattle behaviour principles...

SARAH FERGUSON: She also co-wrote the international slaughter guidelines.

Watching the footage from Kaliawi, Grandin was shocked.

TEMPLE GRANDIN: The conditions are absolutely terrible. I mean you've got a box designed to make a cattle fall down. That violates every humane standard there is all around the world. What I want to know is why is Meat and Livestock Australia's name on the side of this chute?

SARAH FERGUSON: Meat and Livestock Australia say they trained the slaughtermen here in January this year.

One of the distressed animals falls on the slope leading to the box.

TEMPLE GRANDIN: They've got a skating rink for a ramp that the animals can barely, you know, walk up. This is just an absolutely horrible set-up. Now the guy's on top of the animal kicking it because he can't get it to move. I'm really shocked that Meat and Livestock Australia would be involved in building facilities this terrible.

SARAH FERGUSON: When the slaughtermen fail to move him, they drive another steer over the top.

TEMPLE GRANDIN: (Watching footage of Kaliawi abattoir) With a Brahman-type cattle they can get so stressed that they'll just go into tonic immobility and I think this animal's tired. He's just down now and not even protesting he is so stressed.

SARAH FERGUSON: Grandin was particularly critical of the role of the Australian Government and industry.

TEMPLE GRANDIN: Is the Government of Australia going in and providing these really horrible facilities? Something's really wrong. I was really shocked to see Meat and Livestock of Australia's name on this equipment.

CAMERON HALL: I accept that Temple Grandin may well have concerns. At times we have concerns about the standards at, at facilities, at certain facilities. That's why...

SARAH FERGUSON: Which ones?

CAMERON HALL: We continue...

SARAH FERGUSON: Which ones are you concerned about at the moment?

CAMERON HALL: I can't be specific. There are a hundred facilities receiving Australian cattle in the Indonesia marketplace.

SARAH FERGUSON: The restraining box was designed to replace the traditional method of roping animals to posts before the slaughter.

CAMERON HALL: I don't think it's acceptable for Australian animals to be processed in a traditional manner.

SARAH FERGUSON: Despite this, the Australian industry continues to send cattle to abattoirs without boxes.

At the Kota Binjai abattoir in Medan, a steer is readied for slaughter.

The forlorn animal slips repeatedly and is repeatedly abused. The slaughterman appears oblivious to the presence of the camera.

The animal’s bellowing is haunting.

LYN WHITE: I remember thinking so clearly at the time that this animal just didn't understand why he was being beaten, and it was almost like he was calling out why? And there were no answers to that question.

SARAH FERGUSON: Medan is the capital of north Sumatra, one of the country’s fastest growing cities.

And as the middle class grows, so does the demand for beef, enough for Greg Pankhurst’s company to build a feedlot here.

GREG PANKHURST: Medan’s a booming economy. There’s a big industry up there, especially with palm oil, so we saw the opportunity up there to start selling meat in that area.

SARAH FERGUSON: The large government-owned facility that processes Australian animals is hidden away in a poor part of town.

This abattoir in Medan was the scene of some of the worst atrocities against Australian animals filmed by Animals Australia when they came to Indonesia. We wanted to get inside and see that for ourselves but unfortunately the security here is very agitated - they don’t want us to come in.

It’s clear from what they are saying that the whole issue of animal welfare related to Australian animals has become very controversial in the last few weeks. They are agitated and they want us to leave.

When Lyn White came here in March, what she saw could reasonably be described as torture.

WORKER: (Pointing to cattle) Australie. Australie.

SARAH FERGUSON: The slaughtermen had no problem with them filming.

LYN WHITE: It was functioning in two areas, one area with a mark one box where animals were being horrendously slaughtered and animals you know, had extended periods of consciousness before they died, so were clearly aware of their suffering.

And then in the back room you had the traditional method of slaughter going on as well, which again is an example of how little control that we have. Even if mark one was humane, even if there was stunning there, workers could still have chosen to do what they were doing in that facility and kill animals in a different way out the back.

SARAH FERGUSON: There is no reason for this abattoir to be any worse than the others. Meat and Livestock Australia inspected the abattoir in February.

Animals from the Pankhurst-owned feed lot are sent here.

This ear tag shows at least one of the animals came from the Consolidated Pastoral Company.

GREG PANKHURST: We’re very selective in the customers and the places that we do send animals. Of course at time to time you, events do happen which are out of our control.

SARAH FERGUSON: This white steer has been roped. He slips on the wet faeces-covered floor and breaks his leg. He slumps over a stone pylon.

Over 25 minutes the handler goads him to move despite the broken leg.

LYN WHITE: At that point he was in a state of collapse and he should've been slaughtered on the spot. Instead, the worker decided that he would do everything to try and get him to his feet, to drag him in for slaughter.

SARAH FERGUSON: He breaks his tail, gouges deep into his nose and eye socket.

LYN WHITE: He would try and get his head away when his eyes were being gouged. He just couldn't get to his feet because his leg was broken.

SARAH FERGUSON: The stricken animal is kicked - altogether nine times.

LYN WHITE: When all else failed they tried to put water up his nostrils until they finally realised that he wasn't going to get to his feet and then he suffered the most horrendous death.

SARAH FERGUSON: Lyn White and her colleague walked out of the abattoir in shock.

They tried to wipe away the blood from their hands. Nothing wipes away the memory.

LYN WHITE: The fact that I was unable to help them, all I can do now is to try and ensure that they receive some sort of justice. And the only way that that is going to occur is if what they endured prevents other animals from enduring similar treatment.

We described the scene at Mabar to Ken Warriner.

KEN WARRINER: I think it's the most shocking thing I've heard for a long time. We will get to the bottom of that and if those people are still employed in that abattoir we will never ever, ever, ever put cattle into that abattoir. I'd close Medan before we'd let that happen again.

SARAH FERGUSON: Short of banning the live cattle trade, the only way to limit the suffering of Australian animals in Indonesia is to insist they are stunned before slaughter.

Stunning has been accepted for years in a few large private abattoirs that supply hotels and supermarkets, but not in more than 90 other abattoirs that take Australian cattle.

DAYAN ANTONI, INDONESIAN FEEDLOTS' ASSOCIATION: Some abattoir owners have tried to agree to use stunning but sometimes, sometime they have to stop because their, their customers doesn't want, doesn't want any stunning because they said it's not halal.

SARAH FERGUSON: According to religious rules followed here for hundreds of years, the animal must be alive at the time its throat is cut.

For some, that means making the animal unconscious before the killing is wrong.

Haji Zainuddin has been slaughtering Australian cattle in Bandar Lampung for more than 10 years. He prefers to slaughter them the traditional Islamic way.

HAJI ZAINUDDIN, SLAUGHTERMAN (translated): They’re tied up, they have to be laid down facing Mecca and we slaughter them.

SARAH FERGUSON: Zainuddin said Australian trainers had been here the week before. Despite that the slaughtering is poor. The animals died slowly and in pain.

How long does it take to die?

HAJI ZAINUDDIN (translated): One or two minutes at the most.

SARAH FERGUSON: Do you think the animals is dead now?

HAJI ZAINUDDIN (translated): No, it’s not dead yet.

SARAH FERGUSON: So why is he cutting it again if it is not dead yet?

HAJI ZAINUDDIN (translated): Because it has to be cut right through.

SARAH FERGUSON: Zainuddin thinks stunning is unacceptable.

HAJI ZAINUDDIN (translated): In my opinion, according to the law, it’s more like torture.

GREG PANKHURST: It's been a lot of convincing, a lot of talk, it's time. We're talking about a cultural gap, we're talking about thousands of years of tradition, and slowly it is being accepted.

SARAH FERGUSON: Greg Pankhurst’s company has done more than any other Australian producer to encourage the acceptance of stunning in local abattoirs.

At the Z-Beef abattoir they’ve just installed a new stunning device, so new it hadn’t been used yet. It's the first in Sumatra.

TAMPAN SUJARWADI, DIRECTOR, Z-BEEF (translated): The current view is that it doesn’t torture the animal, it just stuns it and technically it doesn’t go against the rules because it doesn’t penetrate the skull.

GREG PANKHURST: We’re talking about a thing that costs $20,000 a head, and this machine would be used in a processing facility anywhere in the world to process three, four, five a thousand head a day. We are going to put them in facilities and we've already started to put them in facilities that process three or four or five head a day.

SARAH FERGUSON: Since we filmed here, this and one other abattoir in Bandar Lampung have started using the stunners. Pankhurst’s company is also installing two more in abattoirs in Medan where their animals are killed.

GREG PANKHURST: You could probably say 90 per cent of our animals could be stunned within 18 months to two years, with acceptance by Islamic people, with acceptance by the people who are buying the meat that they are satisfied that that meat is actually halal.

SARAH FERGUSON: Is it acceptable though for Australian animals to suffer while you wait for Indonesia to take its time to accept these things?

GREG PANKHURST: They don’t need to suffer as - as we move forward, they will suffer less.

SARAH FERGUSON: But they will suffer.

More than 25,000 Australian cattle have been sent to Indonesia since we began filming to be slaughtered in abattoirs funded by the Australian Government and the cattle industry.

With 100 abattoirs and only eight using stunners, the industry knows many will die in appalling conditions.

(To David Farley) Shouldn’t you rule out sending your animals to abattoirs where they’re going to be cruelly mistreated now?

DAVID FARLEY: That would be you know, it's a challenge in itself. We actually don’t know what abattoir our animal’s going to.

SARAH FERGUSON: Don’t you don’t you have enough power to say I won’t accept an AAco animal being sold to these abattoirs?

DAVID FARLEY: ...We’re more on process and systems.

KEN WARRINER: Those images you can't, you can't accept that and if we can't get over that well we don't deserve to be there or we can't stay there.

SARAH FERGUSON: On that point Lyn White agrees.

One of the last abattoirs she filmed at contained one of the most poignant images of all.

At Jalan Stasian in Medan, she found cattle from the Kooline station in Western Australia.

The animals were tied up and forced to watch as others were killed and cut up.

TEMPLE GRANDIN: Fear circuits in the brains of mammals have been completely mapped. Animals definitely experience fear.

SARAH FERGUSON: Until there was only one left.

LYN WHITE: It was heartbreaking. A steer stand there trembling violently as it watched its mates cut up around it. They were clearly cognisant of what was going on and it was causing them extreme fear.

TEMPLE GRANDIN: This is clearly absolutely not acceptable for a developed country to be sending those cattle in there and the thing that shocked me is a developed country built these really horrible facilities.

CAMERON HALL: The Australian industry started supplying animals to, into Indonesia I think in about 1993 and we started our initial programs around improving animal welfare shortly thereafter and...

SARAH FERGUSON: So, so you've had...

CAMERON HALL: And we've been...

SARAH FERGUSON: You've had 18 years to fix this problem and we are seeing animals tonight dying in excruciating circumstances. Why should anybody trust your industry for another day to operate in that country?

CAMERON HALL: What we've seen over that period of time is improvement, gradual improvement. Improving animal welfare is a step by step process. By 2012 all Austra- by the end of 2012, all Australian animals will be only going to facilities that have a restraining box, that have had suitable SOP training in place.

BIDDA JONES: The hardest thing to cope with is that this is still happening and that the Australian Government, the industry have known about this for over 10 years. This is where Australian animals are going. This is what they're going through and they're going, they will be going through it tonight.

SARAH FERGUSON: As we go to air tonight, Australian animals are being lined up in raceways across Indonesia for the slaughter to begin in a few hours.

The question now in the Government’s hands is whether they - and whether the Australian public - will allow this trade to continue.

KERRY O'BRIEN: A few points in closing. Following his interview for this story Greg Pankhurst has told Four Corners he is no longer sending his cattle to the Kaliawi and Mabar abattoirs.

Also, after seeing some of the footage we've put to air, the Australian Livestock Industry announced last week that it had moved immediately to suspend the supply of Australian cattle to three abattoirs.

Four Corners has been able to ascertain that in at least one of those three, as recently as last night Australian cattle were still being slaughtered.

Although he chose not to be interviewed for the story, the Minister, Joe Ludwig said in a statement that despite the improvement of animal welfare over the past decade due to industry and government efforts, he accepts that more work needs to be done.

Something of an understatement.

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