• Animal activists involved in exposing pig farms and slaughterhouses across Australia disrupt Australian Pork Limited's delegates forum and AGM, showing footage of animal cruelty and suffering. 
• The protestors presented awards for 'Outstanding Cruelty to Pigs', highlighting cruelty exposed in Australian pig farms over the past two years. 
• Prominent pork industry leaders, including APL's CEO, Margo Andrae, were in attendance at the event in South Wharf, Melbourne. 

Animal rights activists from Farm Transparency Project (FTP) have disrupted a Delegates Forum and Annual General Meeting for Australian Pork Limited, the government-funded industry lobby group for Australian pig farming and slaughter. Activists attempted to enter the conference room where the Delegates forum was being held and were roughly pushed and shoved by the APL members inside. 

Footage and photos: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/con7kc8v6pv01728zgkxo/AFm6r94uWzwrP9AyHfByf8s?rlkey=4lplpq20t5gl8tegfdz17imo7&dl=0 

Around 30 protestors stormed the meeting, which was being held in the conference rooms of Melbourne's Pan Pacific Hotel. Some of the campaigners held signs and TVs showing vision of the conditions of pigs in Australian farms and slaughterhouses, which have been repeatedly exposed by Farm Transparency Project over the past decade. Attendees of the forum responded to the protestors by roughly pushing them from the room and attempting to force the doors shut. Several protestors were knocked to the ground and one had their leg caught between the door as the pig industry leaders forced it shut. 

Three members, including two who had sustained injuries, of the group remained inside the conference room after members of the forum used a chair to barricade the doors closed. They were later escorted out by police. 

FTP's Executive Director, Chris Delforce, spoke to the attendees, composed of pig farmers from across the country, presenting mock awards for 'Outstanding Cruelty to Pigs'. Recipients included Eco Piggery in Leitchville, Victoria; Van der Drift & Sons in Macorna, Victoria; Midland Bacon in Carag Carag, Victoria; and Andgar Piggery in Dublin, South Australia. 

• Eco Piggery owner David Wright was caught lying to a 2024 parliamentary inquiry about his farm's continued use of sow stalls, and a complaint about the poor conditions and level of suffering at the facility was 'substantiated' by Agriculture Victoria but not acted on.
• At Midland Bacon, FTP investigators uncovered the horrific sexual assault and rape of a female pig, later named Olivia, along with the routine killing of 'runt' piglets by slamming them onto the concrete floor.
• The enormous Van der Drift piggery was, earlier this year, found to be infested with cockroaches and flies, with piglets suffering from mange while another was found with their leg trapped between the metal bars of a farrowing crate floor. Paperwork indicated that across 2024, a sow died almost every day.
• At Andgar Piggery in June this year, investigators found pigs drowning in their own waste, living pigs trapped in a large pile of rotting corpses, and pigs with necrotic wounds; around 350 pigs later burned to death when two sheds caught alight in September. 

With the exception of Midland Bacon, all the piggeries are accredited under the Australian Pork Industry Quality Assurance Program (APIQ). 

Delforce later concluded the awards ceremony in front of the doors to the conference centre, as those inside were seen filming out the windows. 

Delforce: "The action today was intended to highlight the absolute farce of Australia's pig farming industry getting together in a fancy hotel to play-pretend being a legitimate business, while being responsible for such an extraordinary and unconscionable level of suffering. At this very moment, pigs are suffocating in agony inside slaughterhouse gas chambers across Australia, a practice APL continues to call 'humane' despite numerous exposés spanning almost 12 years. Meanwhile, sow stalls are still used in countless piggeries, 8 years after APL promised to have phased them out."

"It's a vile industry completely drenched in scandal after scandal, and fundamentally dependent on a level of suffering and abuse so far out of line with society's expectations. If they want to just keep ignoring that and have cute little meetings about how much money they've made, they're going to have to expect some pushback."

In 2023, Delforce hid inside a Victorian gas chamber for over 9 hours to document footage of pigs being gassed. Over the past 13 years, he has entered and recorded footage at dozens of Australian pig farms, many of which were featured in two documentaries created by Delforce, Lucent (2014) and Dominion (2018). In August this year, he was raided by Victoria Police in an attempt to uncover the source of footage that exposed widespread cruelty in 20 pig farms across the state.