Opinion: Sunak’s £3m for abattoirs won’t cut it

I don’t want to sound ungrateful but did PM Rishi Sunak, at the recent Farm to Fork summit, really expect me to be blown away by his announcement of £3m in government support for new and mobile abattoirs in England?

First, does anyone take mobile slaughterhouses seriously? The challenges are enormous. Come to my farm and slaughter my 30 lambs. But what happens next?

See also: Opinion – I’ve come to the conclusion I’m incurably grumpy

About the author

Stephen Carr

Farmers Weekly Opinion writer

Stephen Carr runs an 800ha beef, sheep and arable farm on the South Downs near Eastbourne in Sussex in partnership with his wife and four of his daughters. He also runs a nearby pub with his nephew, The Sussex Ox, which serves the farm’s beef, lamb, (and fruit and vegetables from the farmhouse kitchen-garden in season) through its restaurant.

Read more articles by Stephen Carr

Where is the vet to make sure the animals are fit?

Do I pop them into my state-of-the-art chiller that I just happen to have installed in my farmyard or do I run the warm carcasses up the road in the back of my Land Rover to my friendly tame butcher who I have waiting on standby?

And where exactly does strict adherence to Food Standards Agency regulations fit in with all this?

So let’s be real and concentrate on the issue of encouraging the building of new small, stationary abattoirs. Right now, the situation is daunting.

A new slaughterhouse obviously requires planning permission but, in England, a proposal to build a slaughterhouse would be about as popular with local residents as a proposal to drill a fracking well for natural gas.

The local council and MP would immediately be buried in objections concerning animal welfare and potential traffic, noise and smell nuisance.

Recognising the planning hurdle that abattoirs face, the All Party Parliamentary Group For Animal Welfare produced a report back in 2020 titled The future for small abattoirs in the UK, which recommended that such facilities be granted special planning status as “essential infrastructure supporting the local economy”.

Unfortunately, the government has completely ignored that recommendation along with the rest of the report, including a suggestion that local government should “procure locally supplied meat where possible”.

Even supposing that planning consent for a small abattoir could eventually be secured, what would it cost to build, given the inflation in the price of concrete, steel, glass and wood in recent years?

Those in the industry tell me that £3m doesn’t go very far even with a very small abattoir facility. 

But the problems don’t end with the cost of building an abattoir.

I still have a clear recollection of attending a crisis meeting for local farmers two years ago when the last small abattoir in East Sussex closed.

There we were, enthusing about how a small local abattoir reduces food miles, improves animal welfare by reducing journey times, provides a link for local food networks, is wonderful for processing rare breeds with thick skins, large horns or long fleeces, blah blah blah…

Suddenly we were interrupted by the proprietor of a small abattoir in a neighbouring county.

Did we understand, he thundered, what a nightmare it was to run such a facility? Where was anyone supposed to find skilled labour post-Brexit?

Who would want to deal with farmers endlessly changing their slaughter plans every five minutes.

“Who in this room wants to run one?” he bellowed. You could have heard a pin drop.

This government has done nothing legislatively to make the construction of small abattoirs easier.

Frankly, Mr Sunak’s £3m budget would be more appropriate for each English county than for the whole country.

His new fund to help build new small slaughterhouses in England is nothing more than an insulting pre-election sop.