Who controls trespass footage? Here’s what the High Court’s answer means for animals – and press freedom

Who gets to see what happens in slaughterhouses? The answer is: officials, sometimes, but almost never the public.

In a landmark case, the High Court of Australia has ruled an abattoir cannot use copyright law to control who sees video – allegedly depicting animal cruelty – that was illegally recorded on its property.

But on the facts of this case, the activists who trespassed to film the video were ordered to destroy their copies.

This case has broad-reaching ramifications well beyond animal welfare concerns, but the court’s verdict is complicated. Here’s what the court found and why it matters for whistleblowers, media freedom and the regulation of abattoirs across the country.

Scandals exposed

Farmed animal welfare regulation in Australia is deeply inadequate.

Industry bodies dominate the creation of codes of conduct that govern slaughter. Export abattoirs are overseen by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, which is also responsible for the industry’s productivity — a potential conflict of interest the Productivity Commission flagged in 2016 when it recommended an independent animal welfare body.

In practice, many of the biggest animal welfare scandals have been exposed by activists rather than regulators, with the former either tipping off journalists or publishing footage themselves.

This includes revelations surrounding live export, the 2015 greyhound live-baiting scandal, and the 2023 footage of pigs being gassed before slaughter, a standard industry practice.

So when activists secretly filmed inside a Victorian slaughterhouse, the question of who could see that footage became a high stakes legal battle landing in the High Court.

What was the case about?

The appellant, Farm Transparency International, is an animal advocacy group that seeks to “force industry transparency and educate consumers” about routine practices in animal agriculture.

People acting for Farm Transparency trespassed seven times on Game Meats Company’s slaughterhouse in 2024 to install, and later retrieve, hidden cameras.

The footage, the trial judge observed, showed goats that appeared not to be unconscious when their throats were cut, and infant goats left in a bucket who bleated in distress as they were stunned.

Farm Transparency argued this breached the Australian Standard requiring animals to be stunned unconscious before slaughter.

Farm Transparency sent the footage to the federal Department of Agriculture with a complaint. When it received no response from the department two weeks later, it sent the footage to Channel Seven, which ran a story without showing the footage. It also posted the footage on its website.

At an initial Federal Court of Australia trial, Game Meats won $130,000 in damages for trespass, but nothing more.

But on appeal, the full Federal Court declared that Game Meats would hold copyright over the video through a mechanism called a “constructive trust”.

This was the real contest. As Chief Justice Stephen Gageler and Justice Jacqueline Gleeson noted, Game Meats repeatedly called “control of the images” “the prize in this litigation”.

Owning the copyright would let Game Meats sue anyone else who held or shared the footage — the department, Channel Seven, or members of the public.

The two judges noted this would affect the public’s freedom of expression. The other judges agreed with the Human Rights Law Centre and Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, who intervened as friends of the court (“amica curiae”). Those bodies argued the copyright trust “could significantly impinge upon the freedoms and interests of third parties”.

The High Court ordered Farm Transparency to delete the footage. But it refused to give the slaughterhouse ownership of the copyright, warning this could impact the free speech of people who hadn’t trespassed.

What does all this mean?

On its face, the judgment leaves journalists and whistleblowers untouched. Channel Seven is free to publish. The court went out of its way to protect people who had no part in the trespass.

But this flow of information depends on footage reaching third parties before a court intervenes. Here, the slaughterhouse moved fast enough so the footage never circulated widely.

That matters beyond animals. Some of the most significant reforms of recent years, including abuse in aged care and youth detention centres, began with unauthorised disclosure of CCTV, or the use of hidden cameras.

In this case, the judges pointed to the relevant regulator as the proper channel for reporting breaches of animal welfare standards.

But regulators enforce rules as they stand. Much of what happens in slaughterhouses is routine, lawful practice at enormous scale. Changing it requires sustained, widespread documentation and public attention, not a single complaint.

Organisations such as Farm Transparency emerge when institutions aren’t fulfilling that role. Whether industry practices meet community standards is a question only the public can answer in a democracy, but they need to be able to see it in the first place. And a picture tells a thousand words.

The slaughterhouse called control of the footage “the prize” and the courts largely framed publication’s harm in commercial terms: footage of animal slaughter might turn customers away.

That framing is revealing. If truthful information harms a business only because people choose differently once informed, that is not harm, but democracy working.

The High Court rightly protected third parties’ free speech, but treating accurate information on a matter of public interest as a harm deserves wider debate. Where commerce and the public’s right to know collide, the public should come first.

Liz Hicks currently receives funding from the Manchester-Melbourne-Toronto Research Fund for a project on constitutional accountability and the environment. She is also a member of the Australian Greens Victoria.

Lev Bromberg previously received a Commonwealth Government Research Training Program Scholarship. He is affiliated with the Australasian Animal Law Teachers and Researchers Association.