The meat trade is never out of the news for long, or so it seems. The pressure group Animal Aid have been in the media spotlight this week, showing pictures, filmed undercover, of three abattoirs, two of which were shown to be, in some cases, not stunning animals properly and not carrying out their duties to the letter of the law. Filming took place ,apparently, over a six-month period, being condensed down into a 10-minute video.
Any abattoir operation, particularly stunning and bleeding of aninals, is an easy target for a pressure group. By its very nature, its an unsightly job not for the faint-hearted, but its a job that someone has to do. Although one should be very careful about commenting on an edited video designed only to show one side of things, some of the scenes portrayed certainly seemed to show a lack of professionalism, and that fact cannot be ignored.
Such an incident as this highlights the no-win situation an abattoir operator finds him or herself in. The law states that the Food Business Operator (FBO) is responsible for any requirement as stated in the law, a point that the Meat Hygiene Service(MHS) have been very quick to make (n0 surprise there.) Fair enough, but the first question every slaughterhouse manager is going to ask is this - What's the vet on site for?! With vets on site for the entire time, they can have no excuse for any animal welfare issue. Again, where were they in a moment of need?

What this episode has cleary shown is that the status quo does not work. It is too easy to pass the buck, to blame someone else. What is the way forward? Perhaps ironically, Animal Aid might well have a workable answer on this issue with the idea that CCTV's should be installed at stunning points that can obviously be monitored. Lots of questions to be dealt with ,of course, but it seems a progressive way forward. Such a thing would be part of a companys own management system, thus the onus would be on the FBO. This could work, but not while the vets are hanging around all day consuming vital financial resources. As long as this continues and the boundaries are blurred, things will not improve.