Meatwork

Film director, Madeleine Parry, has her work cut out for her at the abattoir. Image courtesy ABC TV

Would you look differently at your roast lamb if you had to kill the lamb yourself? This is an interesting and thought provoking question, particularly in the light of the publicity given to recent incidents of animal cruelty in Australia and abroad. 

Documentarian and meat-eater, Madeleine Parry, says she was taught how to kill, gut and cook a chicken by her grandmother. Now she wants to explore whether you can really eat meat and still care about the animals on the menu. So she enlists to become a meat-worker at a small abattoir, and works her way up the production line to the ‘killbox’. 

After a week of shovelling manure and hosing blood, plus all the other dirty work in between, Madeleine learns how to stun and then kill a sheep. The following day, a cow. And later, a pig, on which she says pigs don't let you forget that you are killing them.

This is raw, totally down to earth reality TV that is likely to make viewers think long and hard about ethical eating. And that's a really good thing!

Meatwork screens on ABC2 on Sunday, 11 November 2012 at 9.30pm and is part of an ABC TV and Screen Australia initiative called Opening Shot, where five young filmmakers were given the chance to make a documentary to be broadcast on ABC2.