The abattoir using copyright law against activists

Chris Delforce accepts his films may one day land him in jail.

His footage has generated public inquiries, government taskforces and law reform. In the past fortnight, the Melbourne filmmaker has endured legal threats from a meat processor and, early on the morning of Tuesday, August 12, police raided his Southbank home, seeking footage of 20 piggeries across Victoria.

Five officers "seized my phone and computers", Delforce says. "It's violating when people come into your home and treat you like a criminal. It makes you feel unsafe – you fear a knock at the door."

He says the cruelty captured in the footage "is apparently of far less concern than the people who expose it. Police should not be acting as the private mercenaries of the pig slaughter industry."

More shocking news hit the following day, when a Federal Court order stripped him of copyright of another film, awarding it to a slaughterhouse, Game Meats Company (GMC) in Eurobin, in Victoria's north-east. The court also ordered that his copies of the film be destroyed.