Speaker 1: This is part two of a two part series. If
Speaker 1: you haven't yet, you can start by listening to part one,
Speaker 1: The True Cost of Crocodile Skin. It's in your feed
Speaker 1: now and just a warning, this episode deals with some
Speaker 1: disturbing themes beat reality, animal cruelty, and child abuse. Please
Speaker 1: take care while listening, So Kat. At one point, the
Speaker 1: croc skin industry was considered so successful in the Northern
Speaker 1: Territory that there was talk of emulating it or attempting
Speaker 1: to in another state in Queensland, tell me a bit
Speaker 1: about what happened. That's right.
Speaker 2: The territory had grown one hundred million dollar croc industry
Speaker 2: and Queensland wanted a piece of it. So Queensland introduced
Speaker 2: a new law that allowed wild crock eggs to be
Speaker 2: foraged by licensees, and these licensees would sell them for
Speaker 2: again around twenty five dollars apiece to factory farms. And
Speaker 2: the new law was supported by the all powerful CATA
Speaker 2: party who also wanted and I'm quoting here indigenous groups
Speaker 2: to host crocodile hunting safaris. As you can imagine, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of opposition to the idea, even in
Speaker 2: celebrity circles and in twenty nineteen at Australia Zoo on
Speaker 2: the Sunshine Coast, Bindy Irwin urged her Instagram followers, five.
Speaker 3: Point seven million of them, to.
Speaker 2: Sign a petition to scrap this new law, and she
Speaker 2: warned that crocodile hatchlings would be used to turn into
Speaker 2: boots and bags and belts, and that Australia Zoo's research
Speaker 2: with the UNI of Queensland showed that it would be
Speaker 2: devastating to crop populations to take their babies. Her petition
Speaker 2: provoked these two scientists at Charles Darwin University to give
Speaker 2: her campaign an absolute drubbing. So these two scientists research
Speaker 2: reportedly underpinned Queensland and Territory laws, and their research showed
Speaker 2: but when wild salty eggs get too wet or too dry,
Speaker 2: most eggs die anyway, and even viable hatchlings had a
Speaker 2: slim chance of survival to maturity. And so therefore ranching,
Speaker 2: which is collecting the eggs, had minimal impact on crop populations,
Speaker 2: they argued. In fact, they said it had conservation benefits.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there was a pair of scientists arguing that
Speaker 1: collecting the crocodile eggs was actually good for the environment.
Speaker 1: Who are these two scientists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the duo was Graham Webb, who is
Speaker 2: quite a celebrity scientist.
Speaker 3: He's a blowkey, silver head raconteur.
Speaker 4: There's maybe one hundred thousand crocodiles now, it's about one
Speaker 4: hundred million dollars a year in turn with everybody. It
Speaker 4: extends out in aboriginal communities and it helps the tourist
Speaker 4: in this year here, so we've made them.
Speaker 2: He owns Crocodile Dillis Park, which is a Darwin factory
Speaker 2: farm and it has an adjoining zoo and research lab
Speaker 2: and Bindi. Owen's other detractor was a man named Adam Britton,
Speaker 2: quite a celebrity scientist, who is this eloquent zoologist who
Speaker 2: was then in his forties and he was mentored by web.
Speaker 5: When you work with crocodiles, you have to be very
Speaker 5: respectful of what they're capable of. And if it goes wrong,
Speaker 5: that's why and you lose your hand, that's when you
Speaker 5: lose your arm. That's where potentially you could lose your life.
Speaker 2: He had hobnobbed with Royalty. He'd featured in National Geographic
Speaker 2: and David Attenborough documentaries. Today crocodile specialist, doctor Adam Britton
Speaker 2: is writing along with Robbie.
Speaker 5: He's collecting DNA to help create a genetic map of
Speaker 5: Darwin's crocodiles. What we're doing is we're taking tissue samples
Speaker 5: from crocodiles that were catching in Darwin Harbor.
Speaker 2: And like Graham Web, Adam Britton ran a media business
Speaker 2: and he provided peace to camera expertise and crop.
Speaker 3: For hire talent. And he accused.
Speaker 2: Bindy Irwin of trying to make up facts. But as
Speaker 2: her petition gained momentum, so did a transnational police probe
Speaker 2: into Adam Britton's own fictions.
Speaker 3: And his research.
Speaker 2: Colleague told me that none of Darwin's research community could
Speaker 2: have possibly imagined in their worst nightmares what he was
Speaker 2: capable of.
Speaker 1: What did police uncover about Adam Britton.
Speaker 2: Through online sales sites like Gumtree. Britian had been scamming
Speaker 2: residents who were relocating or retiring, and he was offering
Speaker 2: to rehome their dogs, and he'd sent them fictional updates
Speaker 2: on their pets welfare with photos had taken before he
Speaker 2: abused the dogs inside what he called his torture room.
Speaker 2: And this was a shipping container at the back of
Speaker 2: his home in Darwin's Southeast. He then fed the dog's
Speaker 2: body parts to Smorg, and Smorg was his talent for
Speaker 2: higher crocodile In Autumn twenty twenty two, police raided Britain's
Speaker 2: home and by August twenty twenty four he was serving
Speaker 2: a ten year jail sentence. He was found guilty of
Speaker 2: fifty six charges, including best reality, animal cruelty and possessing
Speaker 2: child pornography. So before his crimes were exposed, his colleagues
Speaker 2: had suspected nothing. Most had considered him a nice guy,
Speaker 2: quiet and gentle and nerdy, But then they started asking
Speaker 2: if he duped peers and dog owners, then what else was.
Speaker 3: Chicanery coming up?
Speaker 1: CAF visits Britain in prison and interrogates the conservation claims
Speaker 1: at the heart of the crocodile skin industry. So cap
Speaker 1: when Adam Britton's crimes were revealed that he had been
Speaker 1: prolifically abusing animals, people began to look at his research
Speaker 1: and question what a conviction like that meant. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me about the questions people had and the conclusions
Speaker 1: that they came to about his crocodile research.
Speaker 2: The research conducted by Adam Britton and Graham Webb asked
Speaker 2: questions like if we remove s from wild crotness to
Speaker 2: supply factory farms, does that have an ecological impact? Their
Speaker 2: research can included that extracting wild eggs and farming crocodiles
Speaker 2: was actually good for conservation, and these findings continue to
Speaker 2: underpin territory and Queensland laws as well as global conservation science,
Speaker 2: and they also informed federal laws governing farm welfare codes.
Speaker 2: Plus Britains and Webs claims helped frame the territories in
Speaker 2: Queensland's crocodile management plans, and the science Britain helped produce
Speaker 2: underpins not just government policy but also public messaging that
Speaker 2: gives social license to this industry. But soon after his
Speaker 2: arrest for cruelty investiality, some of his colleagues then went
Speaker 2: searching for the hard data that supports Britains and Webs
Speaker 2: claims and they couldn't find any worse Still, as study
Speaker 2: by a group of scientists has now found that wild
Speaker 2: extraction for crop farming actually expediates ecosystem decline.
Speaker 1: Okay, and so what is Adam Britton saying about all
Speaker 1: of this? Now? You visited him in Dale, didn't you
Speaker 1: so tell me what he was like and what he said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Britain is now an inmate at Darwin Correctional Center,
Speaker 2: and I was really scared of meeting him.
Speaker 3: His crimes were unfathomably cruel.
Speaker 2: You really can't read the court transcript and maintain your composure.
Speaker 2: And as well as having child abuse material, he's been
Speaker 2: dubbed the world's worst and a lal abuser, so I
Speaker 2: was pretty nervous. What was extraordinary to me was that
Speaker 2: when we shook hands, his hand was clammy and his
Speaker 2: body was trembling, And I soon realized that it was
Speaker 2: possible that this man was as scared of me as
Speaker 2: I was of him. He acknowledged that animal welfare opinion
Speaker 2: coming from a zoasatus might seem hypocritical, but he wrote
Speaker 2: to me that when it comes to animal cruelty on
Speaker 2: crocodile farms, the small size of cages and conditions in
Speaker 2: farms gave Cross a limited behavioral repertoire. And I'll read
Speaker 2: a little more of that letter. It reads single crocodile
Speaker 2: pens have come in for particular criticism because of.
Speaker 3: Their small size.
Speaker 2: While I think it's possible for crocodiles to be kept
Speaker 2: in single pens that don't impact their overall welfare.
Speaker 3: I'd like to.
Speaker 2: See regulations tightened up to ensure this.
Speaker 1: He acknowledged that there are welfare concerns in the crocodile industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he was tacitly admitting that, which is
Speaker 2: significant because his former research colleague, Graham Webb had said
Speaker 2: animal advocates are misguided and that crops enjoy a better
Speaker 2: life in captivity because it's brutal for.
Speaker 3: Them in the wild.
Speaker 2: Still stands by the industry, even though he's distanced himself
Speaker 2: from Britain. And he still claims that Aboriginal workers are
Speaker 2: key beneficiaries of the industry. But when I tried sourcing
Speaker 2: evidence to support this claim, I.
Speaker 3: Hit a wall.
Speaker 2: There's nothing in government data nor industry auditing that suggests
Speaker 2: that Aboriginal people are key beneficiaries of this industry.
Speaker 1: Okay, And to come back to Adam Britain, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a man who it seems was one of
Speaker 1: the worst animal abuses in the country, if not the world.
Speaker 1: His research before he was discovered underpins the way that
Speaker 1: the crocodile industry works. Now, so what does that say
Speaker 1: to you about how we should be thinking about the
Speaker 1: crocodile industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, first, I think lawmakers really mass review whether
Speaker 2: it's okay to have laws concerning animal welfare informed by.
Speaker 3: A zoa sadist.
Speaker 2: Many animal advocates described this as a cruel and unnecessary
Speaker 2: industry that exists solely to cater for the rich. It's
Speaker 2: also been described as secretive, and I know from my
Speaker 2: interviews that very few people employed by the industry are
Speaker 2: prepared to speak out. Many of them are bound by
Speaker 2: non disclosure agreements, and some ex workers wouldn't go on
Speaker 2: the record because they feared industry figures, and some of
Speaker 2: the scientists I spoke we also wouldn't go on the record,
Speaker 2: as the research community in Darwin is really small and
Speaker 2: the university sector is very political. And so I think
Speaker 2: it's useful to think about the industry. As Donnie and
Speaker 2: Belong described it as a very outdated and colonial industry.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned that more recent research has thrown into
Speaker 1: question those claims around conservation and crocodile farming. So at
Speaker 1: this moment, is there anyone who is looking into the industry.
Speaker 1: Do you say that there might be reform that comes
Speaker 1: from this.
Speaker 3: I think there might be reform.
Speaker 2: There is a study about to come out, it's been
Speaker 2: peer reviewed. Hopefully the territory government will look into the
Speaker 2: science now and review the science. Bodies like the UCN
Speaker 2: Graham Web no longer sits on that body. His chief
Speaker 2: scientist still does, but bodies like those are starting to
Speaker 2: question whether it's okay to have its advisory groups kind
Speaker 2: of stacked with industry based scientists rather than what they
Speaker 2: call more blue sky scientists or filled research based scientists.
Speaker 2: I think things are slowly shifting. I think people in
Speaker 2: the fashion justice sector would like to see this industry
Speaker 2: band and transition into something more productive that doesn't cater
Speaker 2: solely towards a rich market.
Speaker 1: Well, Ca, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Ruby, thanks.
Speaker 1: For listening to this episode of seven Am.
Speaker 3: Tomorrow.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with another of our favorite episodes from
Speaker 1: last year. It's about the ways AI chatbots are being
Speaker 1: designed to keep us engaged, with sometimes devastating consequences. The
Speaker 1: story centers on the relationship between an older man and
Speaker 1: a meta chatbot. What it reveals is the way that
Speaker 1: loneliness is being exploited by big tech for financial gain.
Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 3: This is seven am. Thanks for listening.