Graig Farm - What is Organic? > Saving Small Abattoirs & the Future of Food

Saving Small Abattoirs & the Future of Food

A personal view by Bob Kennard of Graig Farm Organics

Given as talk at Organic food & Wine Festival - July 2001

Background

Of course the first problem when talking about abattoirs is that it is, to many people, a subject they would rather not know about. The bit between animals in fields and meat on the plate is something about which they would rather remain ignorant. The other real turn-off to most people in the UK is "EU Regulations". So, recently, when the smaller-sized abattoirs were under serious threat from increased costs of meat inspection, apparently emanating from Brussels, the reaction of many people to this combination of subjects was at best – "so what?" Well, I hope I can show you that this apathy is misplaced, and that if we really care about the quality of our food, we should care passionately about this country’s network of small and medium-sized abattoirs.

Firstly then, a bit of background. Uniquely in the EU, the UK has a wide range of sizes of abattoirs. Each size has its place in the food chain, and its specific purpose. From the large, factory-style plants, which are often tied-in with specific supermarkets and accounting for around half the meat processed in the UK; through the medium-sized, specialist plants; to the small, locally-based traditional abattoirs. From an abattoir, meat is often sent to a "cutting plant", where again there is a huge diversity of sizes, and where carcasses are transformed into the familiar cuts of meat on the supermarket shelf.

Over the past 15 years, mostly in the name of the EU, around 1,000 abattoirs have been closed in the UK – leaving just over 300 operating today. Even this decline followed a continuing trend – in the 1930’s virtually every town and village had its own slaughter-house, often attached to a butchers shop. However, it is the harmonisation of regulations across the EU which most recently threatened to close many of our remaining abattoirs.

So, you may say, what is so wrong with that ? After all, these large modern plants are so much safer aren’t they, and this is all about protecting the public’s health. Well, no actually, that’s not necessarily the case, but I’ll come to that.

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Government's Choice

Back in 1996, the government of the day decided to transfer the control of meat inspection from local Authorities to a central agency – the Meat Hygiene Service. This also included replacing the local Meat Inspector with a Veterinary Surgeon, as required by the new EU Meat Regulation. This determined a standard level of meat inspection across the EU, and gave governments the choice of how to recover the costs of this inspection service. The choice for the UK government was simple - either, in line with the whole of the rest of the EU, they could levy a pre-determined charge per head of animal processed, or they could recover costs for every hour that each inspector was in each abattoir.

Of course, if you think about it, the hourly charging system will discriminate against the smaller plant, which tends to take longer over dealing with each animal. In charging per hour, the cost per animal is higher in a smaller plant – in fact, up to 40 times higher. This of course makes smaller plants less competitive.

What did the government do? Well, probably at Treasury insistence, the government of the day decided to break with the rest of the EU (they would, wouldn’t they!!) and charge for meat inspection by the hour. This was the death-knell of many smaller abattoirs.

However, in the end, it was not as catastrophic as some had predicted or perhaps hoped for. The real zealots of "large is efficient" envisaged a final total of 75-100 plants remaining in the UK, after the dust of "re-structuring" had settled. However, they had not bargained for the tenaciousness of the smaller plant owners, many of whom carried on operating.

Then finally, in 1998, an EU Inspector visited a UK abattoir, and was "horrified" to find that there was not a Vet in attendance 100% of the time the plant was operating, as required by EU Regulations. (The question as to why a Vet, having spent years learning how to save ill and injured animals is the ideal qualification for someone to administer the slaughter of animals is not a subject for today!) In fact, in most small and medium-sized abattoirs, vets were then around for less than a quarter of the time that the plant was operating. A huge increase in vet numbers would be required – at up to £100 per hour.

The British Government, in the form of MAFF, then set about to ensure that by April 2001, there would indeed be a vet in every abattoir, every moment it was operating. This was the final straw. By increasing inspection levels in this way, it was very unlikely that any smaller meat plants would survive, and the way would be left open for a handful of huge plants to totally control the British meat industry. To take my own example of a small organic cutting plant. We calculated our costs would rise from around £300 to around £18,500 per year.

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The Campaign

So it was that I and a number of other individuals and organisations, particularly a wonderful lady farmer from Suffolk - Caroline Cranbrook, worked together to fight this government policy.

We went about it in a number of ways.

Firstly, facts. Richard Young of the Soil Association and I started this factual aspect of the campaign with a Report setting out the facts as we saw them in, September 1999. This tried to show the vast width and depth of the impact of closures of meat plants, with particular emphasis on the organic sector. The effect of this report was to awaken interest from a wide range of organisations and interest groups.

Talking of facts, did you know that according to MAFF’s own research, these new regulations were counter-productive in protecting public health. Let me quote to you from a Parliamentary publication : "Whilst these approaches (the new EU Meat Hygiene regulations) should lead to better hygiene in abattoirs, it is not clear what impact they will have on the microbiological quality of the meat produced. From the point of view of food safety, the effect of such regulation is very likely to have been the opposite of that intended. The tight hygiene standards may well have reduced the contamination of meat from animals by a factor of 2 to 5, but this would be cancelled out very quickly if even a few more animals arrived in a soiled condition, when levels can jump 1,000-fold. The latter appears very likely to have been the case given the long journeys and holding times required by the dramatic drop in the number of slaughterhouses." So, here we have MAFF saying that there is a direct relationship between the number of abattoirs, journey times and food safety.

Our second prong of attack was publicity. We tried very hard with this, but I have to say, with a few notable exceptions, we failed to achieve much notice in the mainstream media. I think again it was perceived public distaste and therefore disinterest in the subject of killing animals. Amongst the exceptions to this general disinterest were Radio 4’s Food Programme and later the Today programme, as well as the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker who did superb work early on, but few followed the lead until much later.

I believe our real crunch tactic, and one from which perhaps others could learn, is the broad coalition which Caroline Cranbrook and I brought together. Until then, the general feeling at least in government was that these abattoirs were a few, mostly rural businesses, which would not be greatly missed, and whose impact went little beyond a few vested-interest groups. We very soon made the government aware that the impact of these small and medium-sized abattoirs went way beyond the walls of a few hundred buildings. We wrote a total of three joint letters to the Minister of Agriculture and elsewhere. The final letter had over 300 organisations signed up to it. I obviously won’t list them all, but they varied from the Church of England, the RSPB, Friends of the Earth, the National Trust, the RSPCA, Wildlife Trusts, all the Farming Unions, the Organic Sector, the smaller end of the meat industry, Rare Breeds, academic institutions, the Guild of Food Writers, and the politician’s terror - the Womens’ Institute !

Why such diversity of interests and what is so important about these smaller abattoirs?

  • Without the smaller meat processors, the burgeoning Farmers Markets could not flourish, nor could Farm shops, nor other direct-sale methods.
  • The government cannot on the one hand encourage farmers to diversify, if with the other they then take away the infrastructure which allows them to do so.
  • Animal welfare groups rightly point out the problems of long-distance transport to fewer abattoirs.
  • Rare breeds of livestock, a precious genetic resource, are financially viable only if identified as such and sold at a premium. They would simply disappear if they had to travel long un-economic distances to be processed. Indeed, the very largest plants will probably refuse to process "Private Kills" of one or two animals.
  • Many small-scale livestock farmers would be forced out of business by the closure of the few remaining local abattoirs.
  • There is an environmental impact of this extra travel, and indeed the recent tragedy of Foot & Mouth has highlighted the folly of long distance transport of livestock. BBC Wales recently traced the story of two lamb chops from farm to supermarket. They were for sale some 30 miles away from the farm on which the lamb was reared. The programme asked how far they thought the chops had travelled. Estimates varied from about 20 to 100 miles. In fact they had travelled 750 miles. This cannot be right, and the supermarkets must change their system – and the consumer must pressurise them to do so.
  • Wildlife reserves are maintained by specialist graziers who rely on a premium for their identifiable product, and local processing facilities to ensure viability. All wildlife bodies are very worried by this less than obvious fall-out from the loss of local abattoirs.
  • The whole point of local food is that it is not anonymous, and the consumer is told the story behind the food. How is this possible from huge factory-abattoirs many miles from both farm and consumer?
  • Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the loss of local abattoirs would lead to a diminution of consumer choice. As a consumer your only choice would be from which supermarket would you buy your anonymous piece of meat? That surely has to be the greatest tragedy of all.

Well, eventually these joint letters began to pay off, for the government announced two Task Forces to look into the issue, and probably to keep me out of mischief, I was invited to join both. The first Report essentially said that the science of meat inspection is seriously flawed, and needs scrapping – it is, after all based on a German system developed over 100 years ago to identify TB in cattle. However, we could not agree on the short-term answer to keep all plants alive until a more modern system was developed. This impasse spawned the second Task Force which came to the momentous decision that we should change the system of charging from per hour to per head of livestock – in-line with the rest of the EU. Many smaller meat plants have, since April 1st, seen their charges fall by up to 90%. The largest plants have seen no change, as they were paying low charges per head before.

So, we won the battle, and in the past three months I have heard of four new or moth-balled plants being considered for development as a result, at least in part, of these reduced charges.

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Winning the battle but not the war

However, whilst we may have won this particular battle, we have not won the war. Not only are their more regulations emanating from Brussels all the time, but we are still often being badly done by by our own Civil Service in the way in which these regulations are being accepted into UK law. Take the latest crop, the details of which I won’t risk terminal boredom by explaining, except to say that instead of being introduced over the next 4-5 years, as we had been led to believe, we have suddenly been told that the EU have decided to introduce them by the end of this year!. And the plaintive cry from our Civil Servants is always – "well we’re really sorry, but we were a minority of one at Brussels, so what could we do?" There needs to be vigilance in monitoring the tidal wave of new regulations which sweeps across the UK meat industry. Much of it is from Brussels, but a sizeable proportion is Whitehall’s "Brussels with knobs on".

If the basis of all this concern is to safeguard local meat being identified as such – what is the point? I believe we are at a cross-roads now, and we have two choices. We can build on the reprieve we have gained for the abattoirs, or we can accept that meat is merely a commodity, like any other. The World Trade Organisation is now turning its attention to agriculture, which is the most protected industry left in the world.

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Is food a commodity?

There are massive forces arguing that food is like any other commodity, which can be produced and traded like so many nuts and bolts. The argument says that areas with natural advantage (climatic, soils or manpower) will produce the cheapest food, and it will then be traded across the world. In the US, the traditional beef industry continues to decline, whilst massive feed-lots continue to break all records. And these feed lot enterprises are getting bigger. In 1999, lots with over 1,000 head of cattle comprised 2% of all feedlots, but marketed 85% of feed-lot cattle. Those with over 32,000 (think about that – 32,000) head, comprised much less than 1% of lots, but produced 40% of feed-lot cattle. Take sheep - in New Zealand, long exposed to world markets, sheep are effectively ranched, and survival of the fittest, both animals and businesses is the order of the day. Livestock producers in the UK cannot hope to compete with this low cost production. Indeed, there are even signs now that the US is becoming worried about even lower-cost imports flooding their own market. Low cost food is a dangerous treadmill.

One of the most worrying statistics I have come across recently is the cost of transporting the meat part for a meal for a family of four from anywhere in the world to the UK. The answer ? Just 10p ! What that means is that distance is no longer a serious element in determining the source of your food, when buyers from supermarkets source their "product".

And who tells the supermarket buyer where to go to buy his product ? Well we do when we clamour for ever-cheaper food. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of average income spent on food has more than halved. The latest figures show average spending on food is now around 15% of income. Perhaps this demand for cheap food has gone far enough – after all, you get what you pay for. Foot and Mouth has been a salutary lesson in that.

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Is food cheap?

And, incidentally, is conventional food actually cheap? One of the great arguments against organic food is that it’s too expensive – to which I would say not that organic food is too expensive, but that conventional food is too cheap. The current collapse of the lamb market to below economic costs of production is a fine example of this.

Recent work by Prof. Jules Pretty amongst others is beginning to shed doubt on this conventional wisdom of cheap conventional food. What Prof Pretty has done is to look at all the costs involved in producing food – not just the High Street cost. He argues that we pay for our food three times. Once when we buy it, once when we subsidise it, and thirdly when we pay to have the mess cleared up afterwards. And intensive farming does produce some serious messes – environmental and medical. Just take the cost of removing pesticides from water, for example – around £120m per year. And even if we don’t pay it when we buy our food - make no mistake we pay for it somewhere else for example as a water user, or taxpayer. In fact it has been calculated that the annual cost of the clear up was at least £2.3 billion in 1996 alone. These are what are called "externalised costs" of food production. If we now compare the total costs of producing our food conventionally with doing so organically, and include these externalised costs on both sides, the results are not so clear cut. The externalised costs of organic food are small in comparison with intensive farming, and it may even be that real total costs of food production are lower in organic farming than conventional.

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Options for Welsh farmers

The British Livestock Farmer is also facing a dilemma. Let us take Wales as an example, and a few quick facts :

  • Around 70 people a week are leaving Welsh agriculture;
  • By 1997, one third of Welsh farms were part-time holdings;
  • The average age of Welsh farmers is over 60;
  • The numbers of Welsh sheep have increased by over 1 million in the last decade to over 5.4 million;
  • Income from farming in Wales last year was a staggering minus £2.6 million – the previous year’s figures showed average incomes at a mere £4,100/year.
  • All this of course, before Foot and Mouth, when 40% of lamb sales will be lost through lack of exports.

Welsh farming is not, to use the organic word, "sustainable". This cannot go on.

The Welsh livestock farmer cannot hope to compete with large-scale ranching across the world. Apart from his own better judgement, the wildlife, landscape and animal welfare lobbies in the UK would not allow him to. So he is at a disadvantage compared with low-cost producers – he has no choice. His only hope, surely is to produce what the consumer wants and is prepared to pay for – the very best quality, traceable food which tells a story, and ideally, organic food. In the case of meat this means additional demands – the very best welfare standards together with minimised journey times, using (and this is where the abattoirs fall into the bigger picture) local abattoirs. With all this in place, the scene would then be set for the Welsh and UK livestock farmer to produce what the consumer says he or she wants.

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A challenge for the consumer

Here is the challenge to the British consumer. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot have food produced in a picture book British landscape, protected from "destructive" large-scale farming and full of wildlife; produced without the use of chemicals; with a local identity, and traceable back to the farmer – you cannot have all of those things and have this drug (which politicians have promised since the war) of ever-cheaper food. You cannot square that circle.

So with the battle to save the country’s network of abattoirs now won (at least for the time being), this is merely the first, vital step down the road to reviving the rural economy and producing food which the consumer wants – be it fully organic or not. There is no easy answer to this, though. It does mean that the consumer must understand how food is produced and ask, if food is cheap – why is it cheap? If you want what you say you want, you must be prepared to pay for it. It is the task of government to support organic farming and to make consumers aware of the real cost of food. And it is for the British livestock farmer to produce what the consumer wants, and for the retailer to make very clear the origin of food.

With a real understanding of the issues, and proper labelling (we hope a British Organic logo is on the way) – the consumer can do what they do best – make an informed decision.

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