Gathercole's Wangaratta Abattoir
10 years ago, this slaughterhouse was one of the first investigated by the recently launched organisation, Aussie Farms (now Farm Transparency Project). At the time, investigators filmed pigs, cows, sheep and calves being beaten and violently slaughtered across two, blood-soaked kill rooms. A decade later, we returned and spent two months installing cameras inside the multi-species slaughterhouse, which sits on a residential street in the busy, rural city of Wangaratta.
The scale of suffering we uncovered was so bad that we’ve had to split it across two videos.
In the cow kill room, workers force cows into a knockbox with an electric prodder, before shooting them in the head with a handheld bolt gun. Often, cows are forced into the narrow box two at a time, trampling on each other in panic as they are shot one-by-one. Our cameras revealed that, more often than not, cows would not be stunned on the first attempt, and would be shot up to four times as they thrashed and tried to escape.
Dozens of these cows are ‘spent’ dairy cows, discarded from the dairy industry at 4-6 years of age when they are no longer able to produce enough milk. These exhausted mothers were seen thrashing and kicking as their throats were cut and they slowly bled out onto the kill room floor.
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EMAIL: Help us shut down slaughterhouses
Across 2023 and 2024, our team documented and filmed conditions at 30 slaughterhouses across fjve states in Australia, the largest investigation into animal slaughter in the countries history. We exposed systemic suffering and abuse in over 10% of Australia's animal slaughter facilities, revealing the reality which is hidden by labels such as 'humane,' and 'high welfare.' Through thousands of hours of footage from hidden cameras, we showed that no animal goes to their death calmly or willingly; there is always pain, there is always fear and there is always suffering. The mass slaughter of intelligent, sentient animals has no place within our... Act now >
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News (8)
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MLA threaten animal rights group with legal action
Friday 15 Jan 2016 by
After days of robust campaigning against Meat and Livestock Australia's Australia Day advertisement, animal activists say they are being threatened with legal action. Read more >
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Animal rights group defiant against Meat and Livestock Australia's immediate take down notice
Friday 15 Jan 2016 by
Meat and Livestock Australia have issued an immediate take down notice to an animal rights group that have used footage from their 'Operation Boomerang' campaign alongside graphic footage from a slaughterhouse. Read more >
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MLA orders Aussie Farms to remove graphic lamb ad parody
Friday 15 Jan 2016 by
Meat and Livestock Australia has threatened to sue an animal rights organisation if it does not take down a graphic parody video that splices footage from the 'Operation Boomerang' lamb ad with scenes from an abattoir. Read more >
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MLA issues take down notice over lamb ad parody showing slaughterhouse scenes
Friday 15 Jan 2016 by
Meat & Livestock Australia has demanded an animal rights organisation take down a parody video using footage from its latest Australia Day campaign and the ad’s star, Lee Lin Chin, along with graphic images from a slaughterhouse. Read more >
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Australia Day lamb ad creators demand animal rights group remove parody clip
Friday 15 Jan 2016 by
An animal rights organisation has defended using a clip from Meat & Livestock Australia’s controversial Australia Day lamb advertisement in its own video, which shows graphic footage of a slaughterhouse. Read more >
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Meat and Livestock Australia threaten legal action over video of lamb slaughterhouse cruelty
Friday 15 Jan 2016 by
The company behind the latest controversial Australia Day advertisement "Operation Boomerang", encouraging Australians to eat lamb, has threatened legal action if a video posted online showing cruelty to lambs in a Victorian slaughterhouse is not swiftly r Read more >
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Animal rights group says it won't show alleged animal cruelty footage to police
Thursday 29 Jan 2015 by
An animal rights group claims it has uncovered footage of cruelty to sheep at an abattoir in Wangaratta in Victoria, but has no plans to show it to police or the RSPCA. Read more >
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Aus Day lamb social media backlash
Monday 26 Jan 2015 by
Animal rights activists have targeted the successful Australia Day lamb promotion through video footage allegedly taken at Victorian abattoirs about nine months ago. Read more >
Media releases by FTP (2)
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Workers caught using bodies of pigs and sheep as punching bags at major Victorian slaughterhouse
Tuesday 26 Mar 2024
Ineffective and painful stunning causes suffering to sheep, pigs, goats and cows. Hidden cameras captured workers at Gathercole’s Wangaratta slaughterhouse using the bodies of sheep and pigs as punching bags, hitting them as they hang suspended on the shackle line, or as they are pulled onto the kill table to have their throat slit. Footage also shows ineffective stunning of pigs, sheep, goats and cows who are shot or electrocuted multiple times as they struggle, before their throats are slit. Gathercole’s is the 13th slaughterhouse exposed by Farm Transparency Project in the past year, as part of a... Read more >
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Victorian slaughterhouse re-exposed by hidden cameras, 10 years after cruelty allegations
Tuesday 5 Mar 2024
Farm Transparency Project has released new footage of the slaughter of cows at Gathercole’s slaughterhouse in Wangaratta. The footage shows cows seemingly still conscious after multiple shots to the head, thrashing and kicking while workers pull them by their tails and poke them with sharp objects. Gathercole’s Wangaratta slaughterhouse was investigated by the same group in 2014, with footage showing the incorrect and painful stunning of pigs and lambs. Photos and footage: https://www.farmtransparency.org/facilities/59c0f-gathercoles-wangaratta-abattoir New hidden camera footage captured in January of this year shows cows shot in the head multiple times with a... Read more >
ABN Lookup
| ABN | 69 060 464 502 (open lookup) |
| Entity name |
G. A. GATHERCOLE PTY. LTD. (from 02 May 2002) G. A. GATHERCOLE PTY. LTD. from 01 November 1999 to 02 May 2002 |
| ABN status | Active from 01 November 1999 |
| Entity type | Australian Private Company |
| Goods & Services Tax (GST) | Registered from 01 July 2000 |
| Main business location | VIC 3197 from 04 September 2000 |
| ABN last updated | 02 May 2002 |
| Extracted from ABR | 21 May 2025 |
