PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Slaughterhouses: Inspections (10 January 2018)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 20 December 2017 to Question 118905, on Slaughterhouses: Inspections what assessment his Department has made of the reasons for the difference in the comparative rate of unsatisfactory audit results for slaughterhouses and other meat establishments.

Asked by:
Kerry McCarthy (Labour)

Although the Food Standards Agency audit system was designed to take into account the variations between establishments, there are several issues that can led to different compliance levels between abattoirs and other establishments:

- Abattoirs have a larger list of sections and questions to be assessed against, and therefore there are more chances for non-compliances (NCs) to be raised. One of these sections is animal welfare, where incidents leading or potentially leading to animal suffering will immediately default to a major or critical NC, impacting directly on the final audit outcome; and

- Slaughterhouses do normally perform higher risk operations than cutting plants, which gives further opportunity for non-compliances to be raised.

Answered by:
Steve Brine (Conservative)
19 January 2018