Animal rights group Animals Australia documented brutal practices in Vietnam late last month and lodged a complaint with the Department of Agriculture last week.

Animals Australia communications director Lisa Chalk said the footage of the cattle being killed with repeated blows to the head with a sledgehammer was "so shocking and distressing" that the organisation had decided not to publicly release it at this time.

Speaking to reporters in Brisbane on Wednesday, Mr Abbott said the government would "carefully investigate" any allegations and "take appropriate action" if the allegations were proved.

"But the last thing we'll do is close down this trade," he said.

Mr Abbott said the Gillard government's 2011 decision to suspend the live cattle trade to Indonesia following an ABC Four Corners program which exposed cruelty in Indonesian abattoirs had been a "catastrophic" decision.

"We're certainly not going to take the former government as our role model," he said.

"We're certainly not going to rush into making the sort of mistake which the former government made.

"We know that on the basis of a television program, a panicked Labor government closed down the live cattle export trade.

"It cost thousands of Australians their livelihoods, at least for a period. It badly damaged our relations with Indonesia, a country which is very important to us. So it was a crazy decision, probably the most short-sighted blunder in Australian foreign policy in recent memory."

Interviewed on ABC TV on Wednesday, Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce said the use of sledgehammers was "barbaric."

"Well, obviously it's blunt instrument trauma, it's disgusting, it's something that happens in a range of parts of the world but we don't
abide by it, we don't condone it."

Mr Joyce said the practice was not allowed under Australia's Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System (ESCAS), the system set up in 2011 to ensure animals exported from Australia were treated humanely.

He said his department had been investigating use of the practice since exporters had reported breaches of the ESCAS system in three small, family-owned abattoirs in the north of Vietnam in March.

"Your viewers should be aware that the reporting for this event came from the industry itself. Not from Animals Australia, the industry self-reported on it. Later on Animals Australia I presume got footage of it but this goes to show that the process that we have in place - of the industry saying this is not tolerated in our export process - is working."

Mr Joyce said his department was trying to establish how Australian cattle had come to be in the abattoirs where sledgehammers were used, which were not accredited under the Australian system.

He questioned the timing of the Animals Australia complaint.

"The question also has to be asked of Animals Australia, I imagine they've known about it since March: do they release things for humanitarian effect or for media effect?"

Australian Livestock Exporters' Council chief executive Alison Penfold said the complaint captured exporters' "worst fears for welfare," that Australian cattle had been illegally removed from approved supply chains for processing in non-approved slaughterhouses.

"No animal should be subjected to the cruel and outdated practice of stunning by sledgehammer – a practice banned by Australian exporters in our supply chains but unfortunately still used in the rudimentary non-approved slaughter houses in Vietnam," Ms Penfold said.

She said in March all Australian exporters to Vietnam had put in place additional measures, including closed circuit TV cameras in every approved feedlot which were monitored by exporters.

"Where breaches are found they will be treated harshly ahead of any conditions placed on exporters by Australian regulatory authorities," she said.

She said Australian exporters had already suspended supply to two Vietnamese importers which had breached its conditions.

Ms Penfold said the council took its responsibility for animal welfare seriously and had taken this action independently of regulatory requirements and Animal Australia's work.

"It is the industry's intention to build Vietnam as a long term sustainable market but we will only do so with importers and facilities that share our commitment to animal welfare."

This included use of proper stunning before slaughter in all cases.

Animals Australia said footage of Australian cattle being killed with sledgehammers in Vietnam was first brought to the attention of the Department of Agriculture in June 2013 by a member of the public.

The organisation had requested a meeting with the Australian Live Exporters' Council because it said it had no faith that the department would take appropriate action.

Vietnam is currently the second largest export market for Australian cattle, with 178,000 animals exported there in 2014.

Only one third of the 350,000 meat slaughterhouses in Vietnam are under control of local authorities.

Most operate without government inspections.

Vietnam's communist government wants to increase the number of approved abattoirs.

"Slaughterhouse owners do not have the correct awareness about veterinary hygiene and food safety as well as social responsibility," Huynh Thi Thang Binh, head of the Rural Development's Veterinary Department said at a recent seminar.

"They only work for profit and refuse to bring livestock and poultry into industrial slaughterhouses," she said.

With Lindsay Murdoch

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