Thirty-year-old worker faces bestiality charge after activist footage

Victoria Police confirmed Campaspe Crime Investigation Unit detectives charged a man following a report of bestiality in Carag Carag on February 11.

"It is alleged a man performed a sexual act on an animal at a property on Robertson Road about 2.15am," a Victoria Police statement said.

Police arrested the 30-year-old man in Carag Carag on March 5 at about 11.30am, and he was charged with bestiality.

The man was bailed to appear at Echuca Magistrates' Court on June 11.

The footage was shown this morning, March 12, as part of a public hearing for the Victorian Parliamentary inquiry into pig welfare.

Farm Transparency Project strategy and campaigns director Harley McDonald-Eckersall said she was disturbed by the footage uncovered, but "unsurprised" by the footage.

She presented the footage at the public hearing, and responded to accusations of illegally obtaining the footage.

"Not only was the practice cruel but surely workers raping sows is a bigger risk to biosecurity than animal activists trespassing on the farm," she said.

"Whether this worker was drawn to this job because of existing desires to exploit animals, or whether these impulses developed due to his work in this intensive pig farm we may never know.

"What we captured at Midland Bacon [the abattoir] is the sickening, inevitable outcome of the normalisation of sexual abuse."

The Farm Transparency Project collected footage from the abattoir, which was released in March, 2023, and protested at the site against carbon dioxide stunning in April, 2023.