AN animal rights activist group has been ordered to pay a Eurobin abattoir $130,000 in damages after staff or agents of the group were found to have trespassed and secretly recorded operations.

The Federal Court of Australia heard on seven occasions between January and April 2024, “masked vigilantes” of the Farm Transparency Group gained access to the Game Meats Company (GMC) premises for the purposes of installing and, later, retrieving covert video recording equipment.

In May, some 14 minutes of around 100 hours of footage had been sent to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in a complaint the group described as video depicting “animal cruelty”.

GMC staff were not aware the footage had been retrieved until they were notified of the complaint by the department.

The group sent the footage to Channel 7 a short time later, who ran a story but did not show the video.

The animal rights group then posted the footage with a corresponding media release, which the court later ordered to take down.

In his judgement on December 19, Justice John Snaden ordered FTC to pay $30,000 in general damages and $100,000 in exemplary damages to GMC.

“Most people eat meat… at the risk of stating the obvious, their doing so requires the slaughtering of animals and the processing of animal carcasses,” he said.

“Commercial meat processing is a gruesome business, no matter how ethically or humanely it is performed.

"The end products of those undertakings are retail offerings that bear no visual resemblance to the luckless beasts from which they are harvested.”

GMC general manager Darren Webb told the department the company was “deeply concerned” about the video which highlighted “a number of serious non-compliances that need to be addressed immediately”.

The court heard GMC made multiple changes to address some of the concerns raised from the video, including increased surveillance, which staff have been hesitant to accept.

The abattoir also laid off two contract workers who were depicted in the video and reported a downturn in production since the trespasses came to light.

GMC sought legal action to prevent the animal rights group from publishing any of the footage and sought a copyright over the video.

The animal rights group admitted to trespassing and agreed to pay damages, but maintained they were against the prohibition of re-publishing the footage.

Justice Snaden said he did not consider any of the animal rights group’s publications as a damaging falsehood and would not ban the group’s use of the video.

“Whether it depicts instances of animal cruelty or not, there can be no doubt that the 14-minute footage is difficult to watch,” he said.

“I consider that Farm Transparency Group is correct to calculate that the footage that it has obtained at the Eurobin premises is footage that will assist it in turning people away from the consumption of meat processed by commercial operations such as GMC’s.

“Had I considered that its publication would have promoted a falsity and been actuated by malice, it might well have been that injunctive relief would have been appropriate.”

The group will be able to re-publish the footage following the end of an appeal period.