Like cows to the slaughter in the media abattoir

This article was published in ABC The Drum 2 June 2011

The number of times anyone says 'yes' to a film crew has diminished. It's so much safer to say 'no', and buy some ads.

It was one of those 4 Corners programs that everyone was talking about next morning, even though rather few people could actually stomach watching it the night before.

I did watch it, from beginning to end - and even as I found myself revolted by the barbarity of the treatment meted out to the cattle ('Australian cattle', we kept being told, as though that made it infinitely worse than if they'd been mere Indonesian moo-cows), I also found myself fascinated by the insouciance of the abattoir workers.

Here was this tall blond white lady recording everything on a video-camera - the beatings, the head-bashings, the hacking at throats, the whole gruesome rigmarole - and nobody turned a hair. Even when a steer broke its leg, and a slaughterman beat it, and stuck his fingers in its eyes and nose to goad it to get up, no one asked Lynn White of Animals Australia to turn off her camera.