Keeping watch over an uglier side of industry

As Jason Aldiss says, slaughtering is "not a light and frilly business".

Stunned cows still kick, on their way to the final "stick" – the cut which lets their blood out in a rush.

In the waiting rooms, pigs squeal and sheep mill in panic, as they are electrically stunned, one by one. On the killing floors, every surface gets slick with blood and guts.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Capture all this on murky video and it looks bad even if everything is done by the book.

Animal Aid, the undercover reporters of the livestock business, sometimes benefit from ignorance of the hard reality.

Whatever they find, people are shocked. And when they produced films from seven English abattoirs earlier this year, the reaction was muted by an assumption that the charity was manipulating sentiment as usual. In fact, this time, even industry professionals were shocked. Mr Aldiss was among them.

A final report on the films and their consequences was published this week.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

At the time the footage was made public, Mr Aldiss was president of the Veterinary Public Health Association, which includes resident abattoir vets and touring inspectors. From an office on the outskirts of Leeds, he manages 200 of them, working for the Food Standards Agency's biggest abattoir monitoring contractor, Eville & Jones. He represents the vets in EU negotiations. And he still visits abattoirs himself. Actually, he says, he loves the places, and the people in them – because they work hard at real jobs.

"I am pleased to assist in something so essential," he says.

He was called in when Animal Aid took its films to the British Veterinary Association and he fixed a summit meeting of the authorities concerned. Nine slaughtermen had their licences suspended by the Food Standards Authority. Two are back in the business on probation. Prosecutions were under consideration but the investigation was dropped, after the General Election, because the films could have been ruled inadmissible on grounds of trespass.

The campaigners wanted more – but for once, they have successfully shaken the establishment.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Rockets have been delivered all round; a review of policing is in progress; and Animal Aid's demand for video surveillance throughout the business is under serious consideration.

The main offence was inappropriate use of stunning tongs, on sheep and pigs, to drop them before the knock-out application to the head – or sometimes, apparently, just to punish them for being difficult.

Animal Aid thought it had proved the whole system was rotten. The industry said it had only proved there were bad'uns in every trade. That is still roughly Mr Aldiss's position, but his belief in the rough diamond virtue of the industry took a knock.

Aged 40, he grew up in the southern hemisphere, where his father was in shipping. He qualified in New Zealand and worked with cattle and horses before heading "home" to England, where his family are big in Norfolk agriculture.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

He still believes the job is usually done as humanely as it can be. Abattoirs are monitored constantly – by EC, by supermarkets and by food assurance bodies, as well as the meat inspectors and vets imposed by the government, plus other agencies checking on their supply chain. Kosher and halal abattoirs come under the same scrutiny.

We met Mr Aldiss on a routine visit to Penny's of Rawdon, Leeds, a rare survivor among small abattoirs. A staff of 50 or so, slaughtering and butchering, is watched over by five resident meat inspectors and a vet.

Boss John Penny had a hoarding put up recently: "People in the know buy Penny's meat." It is a slogan which will not mean much outside the meat trade. But maybe the time has come, Mr Penny suggests, when shoppers need to know as much about the abattoir as the farm. Mr Aldiss thinks that is not a bad idea.

He comments: "Certainly, the whole business of farm-to-fork accreditation could be much more joined up."

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

He says that with more than cruelty prevention in mind. The recent fiasco over offspring of cloned animals was, he says, a good example of the flaws in the existing system.

To anyone who understood the livestock business, it was obvious that meat with cloned genetics in it would be going for slaughter unless somebody stopped it. But it was already happening by the time the Food Standards Agency caught up. There was one small consolation for the meat trade bureaucracy – the traceability system, tried in earnest for the first time, worked a treat.

Animal Aid published a final report on its investigation this week. See Behind Closed Doors at http://www.animalaid.org.uk/images/pdf/booklets/slaughter.pdf.

CW 6/11/10