The future of the UK’s 47 remaining small abattoirs is looking more secure, after the Food Standards Agency moved to retain a vital discount on compliance measures.
The FSA has given a long-standing discount to all abattoirs for services undertaken by official vets to comply with food safety regulations.
For England and Wales in 2025/26, the total discount will amount to £14.9m – or about 10% of the FSA’s annual budget – with industry paying around 75% of the £58.9m total estimated costs.
FSA board members this week heard proposals to phase out the discount as part of wider “cost recovery” moves by the government to cut spending. However, they agreed the measure should remain in place for small operations, including game-handling businesses – given their reliance on the discount for economic viability.
Small abattoirs experience “a much greater regulatory cost per animal” compared with larger operations that had greater economies of scale, the FSA conceded.
The threat of an end to the discount for all slaughter plants had prompted fears over the past six months that many smaller operations would be driven out of business. The Association of Independent meat suppliers recently warned up to 40% would have to close if the measure was phased out.
A recent survey by the Sustainable Food Trust, the Soil Association and Rare Breeds Survival Trust of 850 UK farmers who use abattoirs also found that a third had already seen the abattoir they were using close down over the past five years.
And if their current abattoir were to close, some 43% said they would no longer sell meat locally, and 29% would have to close their business.
Retaining what was in effect a subsidy for small abattoirs would support local communities and consumer choice, accommodating a range of animals, an FSA board paper said, while helping shorten supply chains – providing animal welfare benefits.
If these abattoirs were lost “it would damage existing local economies and inhibit future growth”, the paper read.
Further work will now be undertaken by the FSA to identify what constitutes small, medium and large abattoirs. A recommendation to ministers for a cut to the overall discount budget will then be made towards the end of the year.
The move to protect small abattoirs from the budget cut, given how their cost of regulation was nine times higher than larger operations, was welcomed by industry stakeholders.
Without the discount smaller abattoirs “would have to close or pass costs on to customers”. said the Soil Association.
It was “essential to allow small scale and organic farmers to connect with local customers and to support a diversity of livestock, including rare breeds, and higher quality grade fresh meat” via such a channel, said the body’s organic sector development adviser Adrian Steele.
AIMS said it was “pleased” to see support for retaining the discount for small abattoirs.
“However, we remain concerned for larger plants for which there would be no need for a ‘discount’ if delivery of controls was more efficient and the cost of other official activities was not being included in official control charges, an issue that AIMS is currently challenging in the High Court.
FSA chair Susan Jebb said: “Our vital food safety and animal welfare checks, which are required by law, play a crucial role in protecting public health and supporting exports. For many years we’ve provided support for abattoirs via a discount on our charges, which we’re currently evaluating.
“Evidence presented to the board, gathered through extensive engagement and economic analysis, showed that smaller business face a disproportionately greater cost of regulation and the importance of the discount to their viability.”
The FSA board ”acknowledged the value of continued support for small and some medium-sized abattoirs in the interests of consumers, businesses, and the wider rural economy”, she added, and ”discussed how this support could also be targeted to recognise the importance of other factors including compliance to standards, animal welfare and innovation and asked officials to continue to engage with stakeholders to develop proposals for a potential new scheme.”
It would ”revisit this in a future board meeting to determine our final advice to ministers, who will ultimately take a decision on the future of any support”, Jebb said.
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