Agriculture Bill must help prevent ‘tragedy’ of local abattoir closures

SMALL abattoirs are essential for the marketing of local meat from farms with high welfare and environmental standards, but numbers continue to decline.

That’s the stark word of warning from the Sustainable Food Trust and Campaign for Local Abattoirs, who have jointly called for the assistance of MPs and peers to help ensure the survival of the local meat sector – which the closure of small abattoirs puts at risk.

In a recent Parliamentary Briefing paper, the organisations said small abattoirs are “unable to compete” against their larger counterparts due to bureaucracy, excessive regulation, increasing costs and falling income, as well as new capital expenditure requirements.

A third of the smallest abattoirs (those slaughtering less than 1,000 livestock units a year) closed between 2007 and 2017, the paper added, with six more closing this year – taking the number in operation to just 57.

Richard Young, Sustainable Food Trust policy director, described the

‘Local meat producers, whether organic, pasture-fed, rare breed, or free-range depend on small abattoirs’ RICHARD YOUNG,

abattoir closures as a “completely unnecessary tragedy”.

“Producers who have adopted less intensive production methods that meet the increasing public demand for high-welfare local meat, are having to take their animals further and further to get them slaughtered, increasing costs, reducing welfare and causing more vehicle emissions than necessary,” he said.

“There comes a point when this is no longer economically viable.”

Including the 49 abattoirs slaughtering up to 5,000 livestock units annually, many of which also serve local meat producers, there are now only about 100 abattoirs to which local meat producers can turn, the briefing paper added.

Mr Young added that parts of the country are already without a local abattoir and if the decline is allowed to continue, the supply of local, fully traceable meat will “dry up”.

He went on: “Local meat producers, whether organic, pasture-fed, rare breed, free-range or heritage breed, depend on small abattoirs because large ones are generally not able to slaughter animals for individual producers and return both carcasses and offal to them for sale through farm shops, independent butchers and other local outlets.” The briefing paper also revealed that over the last year, some small abattoirs have seen the cost of waste disposal double, due to consolidation in the rendering industry and the resulting lack of competition. In recent weeks cattle hide prices have fallen to half their 2014 values and sheep skins are fetching just 10-20p, whereas 20 years ago they were worth £6 each.