A sixth-generation farmer and psychologist was left shaken after receiving a wave of abusive online comments after opening up on Facebook about her pig farm's closure.
Bethany Paterson and her husband John Duka farm on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula with crops and, until recently, thousands of pigs as well.
However, with the drought driving the cost of grain up and pig prices low, the couple said they had to close the operation Ms Paterson's parents built about 40 years ago.
Over the past 12 months they have been winding down their pig business, a process Ms Paterson said involved a lot of grieving.
When the last pigs left, Ms Paterson wrote a post on Facebook explaining the reasons for the closure and the pain it had caused them, and she encouraged people to buy Australian products.
Then the abuse started.
Ms Paterson said while more than 800 comments were positive, some outright attacked her, including one which said they wished Ms Paterson was the one being slaughtered.
"I've hidden about 100 comments or so," she said.
"I would have thought that during a difficult time, that even if you have different values to someone else you might be able to tune in to the humanity of the situation, that someone is struggling and that times are tough."
Mr Duka said that while some commenters claimed the closure as a victory against the pig industry, he said ultimately the pig industry would not even notice.
"Like most business if you see an opportunity to increase your sales then you do that, and that's what the corporate guys will do here, or a local might increase their herd size to pick up the slack," he said.
Ms Paterson said of about 100 of the comments she hid, about 30 were direct personal attacks against her, but the comments were predominantly positive.
"Tolerating a bit of abuse is worthwhile if my post helps raise awareness about supporting Aussie farmers," Ms Paterson said.
Imports put pressure on farmers
Australian Pork's Peter Haydon said pig imports from overseas and the large amount of pork on the market were big issues for the pig industry.
"It had a huge impact on Australian pig farmers in the early 2000s when imports started coming in large quantities," he said.
"Bethany's issue is probably more to do with domestic supply and demand, but imports have certainly had a huge impact over the past two decades."
About 75 per cent of Australia's pork products come from overseas.
Mr Haydon said a lack of understanding about county-of-origin labelling was confusing some consumers.
He said while a pork product might say "30 per cent Australian products", that did not mean the meat itself was from Australia.
"[Foreign pork] comes in generally frozen, it can only be sent to government-approved facilities and it has to be cooked for a certain amount of time to be safe as Australian pork," he said.
"Through the curing process you lose water, generally meat is about 70 per cent water, so the manufacturers put the water back in, and that water is obviously Australian."
For those wanting to buy Australian meat, Mr Haydon said they should choose products which were about 90 per cent Australian and choose meat with bones in it.
