For Immediate Release
16 July 2025

Small-scale Farmers Call Out AMIC’s Denial of Abattoir Access Crisis

The Australian Meat Industry Council (AMIC) has once again demonstrated its alignment with corporate interests over community needs by claiming there is no issue with access to abattoirs in Australia. As the national representative for small-scale farmers, butchers, and local food advocates, the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) is compelled to correct the record. This claim is not only disingenuous—it is dangerous.

A recent report by AFSA found that 80% of farmers surveyed have lost access to abattoirs. Across the country, farmers are being forced to truck animals hundreds of kilometres due to the closure or consolidation of regional abattoirs, with associated negative impacts on animal welfare. Many have lost access to private kill services altogether, and are instead funnelled into vertically integrated supply chains where processors dictate price, timing, and market access. This is not a functioning local food system. It is a captured one.

Let’s be clear: the lack of access to appropriately scaled and locally controlled slaughter facilities is currently one of the greatest threats to resilient regional food economies in Australia. It is undermining small- and medium-scale producers, making it near-impossible to meet demand for ethically raised and locally processed meat, and placing unsustainable burdens on both farmers and animals.

‘The Victorian Government has been particularly supportive of the urgent need for legislative reform to solve the issue of access to abattoirs, and are open to a range of measures to make it easier for smallholders to build their own on-farm or mobile abattoirs to deal with the challenge of consolidation,’ says AFSA Focal Point for Farmers, Tammi Jonas.

Indeed, governments should take heed and learn from the recent past – the dairy industry has lost 67% of dairy farmers since 2000 as a result of de-regulation and extreme consolidation of the processing sector. The meat industry is going down the same path, and we face a future where there may be the same volume of meat produced but by very few remaining farmers.

AMIC’s sweeping denial of these systemic failures highlights the very problem: a refusal to acknowledge the lived experience of those outside the industrial model. ‘For those of us committed to nourishing our communities while caring for land, animals, and each other, the current system is not serving us—it is actively excluding us,’ says Jonas. 

Crucially, it’s not just farmers who are impacted by the corporate consolidation of abattoirs, but also butchers who lose access to high quality, local meat.

“I speak as an independent butcher of nearly 2 decades who chooses to work directly with producers who operate outside of the grouping of industrial scale meat producers and processors that AMIC clearly represents. Despite AMIC CEO Tim Ryan’s assertions to the contrary, reduced access to abattoir services in Australia is the single biggest threat to the long term survival of our business and those of scores of producers with whom we work. To argue that access is no more difficult now than it was a decade ago by saying the total number of animals slaughtered over that period is relatively stable, both misrepresents and wilfully ignores the reality faced by producers and retailers in this sector who choose to operate outside of the industrial model clearly favoured and supported by AMIC,” says Grant Hillard, owner at Feather and Bone.

We call on governments at every level to listen not just to industry lobby groups, but to the farmers, First Peoples, eaters, and butchers building a just food future. The answer isn’t bigger and fewer abattoirs. It’s a distributed network of small-scale, community-controlled facilities that prioritise food sovereignty over profit.

We are not asking for charity—we are demanding structural change.

-ENDS-

Contact:

Dr Tammi Jonas | (m) 0422 429 362
Focal Point for Farmers, Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Check your sources – who are AMIC?

AMIC’s members include meat processors, smallgoods manufacturers, and retailers (butchers). Their board is composed of the biggest operators in the meat industry, including the processor group, of which none offer service kills through their vertically-integrated abattoirs. AMIC do not represent the interests of smallholders and are acting blatantly against our interests. Their failure to advocate for local abattoir access is also directly against the interest of their independent butcher members who rely on that access for local meat for their shops.