Saturday, April 29, 2006
HAMBURGER PATTY
The ABC’s Melanie Christiansen presents an interview with Patty Mark, one of the protesters at yesterday’s meat battle:
MELANIE CHRISTIANSEN: The World Meat Congress has drawn the industry’s leaders to Brisbane this week, closely followed by animal liberation activists, who’ve staged a series of protests.
[Friday] morning they invaded an abattoir at Ipswich just south of Brisbane, where they chained themselves in.
Protester Patty Mark says what followed was frightening.
PATTY MARK: The abattoir workers were very violent to us. We were chained right over the killing room floor. The owner came in with an angle grinder and started to … We begged for the police.
MELANIE CHRISTIANSEN: But before police arrived, she said, things got even worse.
PATTY MARK: He then came back with the whole lot of … how many were there? About 40 abattoir workers.
They were yelling and screaming, and he got the angle grinder himself and started to cut right within … near where we were chained.
It was terrifying. We didn’t have protection on our eyes. The sparks were flying.
MELANIE CHRISTIANSEN: Fellow protester Noah Hannibal says he couldn’t believe what was happening.
NOAH HANNIBAL: Like, this guy was basically coming at us with an angle grinder, so there were people shaking, there were people in tears and he was just saying, you know, “I’m enjoying this.”
He isn‘t alone. Nice to see workers and management joining forces during what became a tremendous bonding exercise.