On the 13th of August 2025, animal rights campaigners in Australia expressed profound disappointment after the Full Court of the Federal Court granted a permanent injunction to the Game Meats Company slaughterhouse, forbidding the publication and sharing of undercover footage which exposes their treatment of goats. The footage, originally released on the 17th of May 2024 by the Farm Transparency Project, allegedly showed routine breaches of animal welfare legislation, with distressing scenes of goats being slaughtered whilst fully conscious, and young goats subjected to painful electrocution.
The court’s decision upholds Game Meats Company’s claim to copyright over the footage — an alarming legal precedent with implications for anyone documenting the commercial exploitation of non-human animals on private property. The order requires Farm Transparency Project to delete all copies of the footage within seven days, effectively silencing one of the key avenues for exposing animal suffering within the industry.
In an Instagram post, the Farm Transparency Project said, “We’re devastated to announce that in its decision handed down today, the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia has granted the Game Meats Company slaughterhouse’s appeal seeking a permanent injunction to block footage of its cruel and illegal practices. The court upheld the Game Meats Company’s argument that it should be granted copyright over the footage, setting a chilling new legal precedent affecting footage obtained of commercial activities on private land… While we originally published over an hour of footage on May 17, 2024, we were served with a temporary injunction shortly afterwards, and had to take it down that same night. This means that the footage can only be shared or published by people who downloaded it prior to it being taken down…This trial has always been about the public’s right to know what happens to the animals who are bred and killed for food. Today it was confirmed that, in the eyes of the law, the transparency the animal slaughter industry loves to brag about in their marketing campaigns is nothing but a smokescreen, designed to hide their real actions from the public.”
