Isabel Oakeshott for the Daily Mail's recent articles

ISABEL OAKESHOTT: According to the local tourist board, the small town of Dalby in Queensland, Australia, offers a taste of life as it used to be. Visitors are encouraged to explore by horse and cart, following a heritage trail to a museum displaying ancient farm machinery. However, further off the beaten track is somewhere less reminiscent of a simpler past. In fact, it is a warning of a dystopian future. Grassdale Feedlot is the largest beef farm Down Under and if the UK Government signs a controversial trade deal with Australia, meat from here could soon be on Britain's dinner plates. The farm is a vast, bleak expanse of dust and mud, home to 78,000 cattle. All around are luscious green fields and woods but these animals rarely see a blade of grass. They spend most of their lives standing listlessly in what looks like an enormous car park, waiting for their next meal to arrive via a metal chute, or huddling under the drab grey awnings that provide some mercy from the scorching sun. ...read

ISABEL OAKESHOTT: Amid a local coronavirus spike, police have sealed off an entire housing estate and put up 8ft-high metal barriers to stop residents leaving - regardless of whether they have the disease or not. What all the residents have in common is that they work at, or live near, a giant meat processing plant at the centre of the outbreak. More than 1,500 employees tested positive for the disease at the Tonnies Fleisch abattoir (pictured) in Verl, North Rhine-Westphalia, which supplies supermarket giants including Lidl and Aldi. The fact is that in many countries, including Britain, meat factories have become breeding grounds for Covid-19. ...read