Having owned a pub for the past seven years, in which we serve our own home-produced organic Sussex beef and Southdown lamb, regular trips to local abattoirs have become woven into my farming routine.
Imagine my alarm, then, when I tried to book a fat two-year-old steer into one of these facilities (three weeks in advance of delivery), only to be told: “You can, Stephen. I just hope we’re still open by then.”
See also: Why local abattoirs are at risk and how farms are affected
About the author
Stephen Carr
Farmers Weekly Opinion writer
Stephen Carr runs an 800ha sheep, arable and beef farm on the South Downs near Eastbourne in partnership with his wife Fizz. Part is converted to organic status and subject to a Higher Level Stewardship agreement.
This slaughterhouse, it seems, is in danger of becoming part of a worrying trend that is seeing more and more small-scale, local abattoirs close their doors for good.
The causes of these closures always seems to be the same: mountains of red tape, wafer-thin profit margins, insufficient cash to justify capital investment in upgrading the facilities, succession issues, and the difficulty of recruiting skilled staff.
Given the nature of the work in slaughterhouses, it’s not hard to understand why, with our increasingly anthropomorphic view of animals, there is not a queue of eager young Brits lining up to staff the slaughter lines.
Being able to deliver my home-grown exotic breeds of cattle and sheep to a local abattoir, to be served in a local pub, has become vital to two businesses that I run.
The shortage of skilled foreign abattoir workers hasn’t exactly been helped by the government’s idiotic refusal to include abattoir personnel in the priority “shortage occupation list” since Brexit.
Regarding the other causes of slaughterhouse closures, it seems there is little that can be done about the disproportionately large amount of paperwork generated by very small consignments of animals.
Nor is it easy to see how small slaughterhouses can put up their charges to customers.
The throughput of small abattoirs often involves rare breeds that have unusually thick or furry skins, long horns or higher levels of fat cover etc.
Many of the producers of these animals are small-scale farmers who work on very tight margins, running farm shops, farmers’ market stalls or independent butcheries, so the ability to charge the true cost of the complexity of processing these animals is limited.
The government must step in to ensure that we don’t lose any more small slaughterhouses as we are already down to barely one per county.
Relief from local business rates and the introduction of grants to install new equipment would both be a huge help.
A renaissance in the artisan brewing sector, which continues apace, was kick-started by simple measures such as lower beer excise tax on small breweries and the provision of generous capital grants for the purchase of kit.
There is talk of “mobile abattoirs” that visit farms taking the place of small abattoirs, but these have been slow to get off the ground.
It’s difficult to see how they would work in practice in terms of ensuring adequate animal welfare and food safety standards.
Even if they could be made to work, mobile facilities would surely only further undermine the small local abattoirs still trying to make a go of it.
Being able to deliver my home-grown exotic breeds of cattle and sheep to a local abattoir, to be served in a local pub, has become vital to two businesses that I run.
But I am merely one of thousands of small-scale meat producers, all with a fabulous variety of different and interesting products to sell, who will find it very difficult to continue if we lose our few remaining small abattoirs.
I’ve given my local MP the full 40-minute lecture. I suggest you do the same, before it’s too late.