Lawyers and animal welfare advocates have urged the government to protect veterinarian whistleblowers who revealed shocking animal welfare breaches and oversight failures at Australia’s export abattoirs.
The Australian government relies on a workforce of veterinarians placed inside export abattoirs to monitor animal welfare and food safety, largely to satisfy the requirements of major trading partners such as the US and EU.
Guardian Australia revealed on Saturday that whistleblower vets have repeatedly raised the alarm about profound problems with the system, including allegations that disturbing welfare breaches were going unreported to state regulators.
In some cases, shocking incidents – including the mass death of 103 sheep from hypothermia during truck transport – were referred but not punished.
Whistleblowers also alleged chronic understaffing was leaving abattoirs unmonitored for long stretches, and that recent restrictions on conducting ante-mortem inspections had made it impossible for them to properly monitor animal welfare.
Leaked documents show repeated warnings about the system’s failings were made internally and externally – including through a formal complaint to the commonwealth ombudsman in 2019 by half the permanent government veterinarian workforce in New South Wales – and more recently through a detailed letter directly to then agriculture minister Murray Watt.
The disclosures have prompted calls for the government to ensure the whistleblowers are protected from any future reprisal.
The Human Rights Law Centre’s whistleblower project, a legal service assisting potential whistleblowers, said it had provided advice to a number of individuals wanting to “expose animal cruelty and related issues”.
Its associate legal director Kieran Pender said the export abattoir revelations showed the importance of whistleblowers to “truth and transparency in Australia”.
“When wrongdoing occurs behind closed doors, whistleblowers provide essential accountability,” he said. “Without whistleblowers exposing some of the most significant incidents of animal cruelty in the agriculture sector over the past few decades, considerable reforms and policy changes would not have been implemented.”
He said speaking out about wrongdoing could carry “enormous risk” and that reforms were needed to improve protections and establish an independent body to guide and advise whistleblowers.
“It’s critical that whistleblowers who speak up don’t face reprisal for shedding light on information that is so overwhelmingly in the public interest. Whistleblowers should be protected, not punished.”
Animals Australia, an animal protection organisation, said it had been approached by whistleblowers who were fearful of repercussions for speaking out about welfare issues.
“There must be stronger protections for whistleblowers,” Animals Australia’s legal counsel Shatha Hamade said. “Vets with professional and ethical integrity are being forced out of the system.”
The agriculture department has rejected the allegations that its oversight of export abattoirs is compromised. A spokesperson rejected suggestions understaffing had left abattoirs unmonitored or that it had stopped vets from conducting up-close inspections of animals before slaughter.
It declined to comment on individual complaints by whistleblowers.
Labor has committed to increasing oversight of the sector if re-elected by expanding the remit of the inspector general for Animal Welfare and Live Animal Exports.
It told the Australian Alliance for Animals that: “If re-elected, Labor will expand the role for the Inspector General to include export abattoirs to provide additional assurances to our trading partners, noting the responsibility of states in managing these sites.”
