Help us help small and medium sized abattoirs - a briefing for action
We need your help to ensure small and medium sized abattoirs have a fighting chance of remaining in business
Help us help small and medium sized abattoirs
In June 2025, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has a decision to make at its Board meeting; either to launch a public consultation on the discount that it currently offers to small and medium sized abattoirs; or to accept the Treasury proposition that it should remove the discount and replace it with ‘full cost recovery.’ The Association for Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS) estimate that full cost recovery will lead to the closure of 40% of the small abattoirs left in England and Wales. Defra has been tasked with conducting a ‘call for evidence’ as part of an impact assessment (to include assessment of the wider societal and consumer benefits) that will be presented to the FSA Board at its June meeting. Defra has approached Soil Association and others to contribute; that is what this briefing is about.
Unless you want to contribute to this ‘call for evidence’ there is no need to read the rest of this briefing. This FSA ruling will not impact Scotland, where abattoirs are inspected through Food Standards Scotland (FSS).
The current situation with abattoirs in England and Wales
Abattoirs pay the FSA directly to be inspected (unlike how restaurants are inspected by Environmental Health Officers). The FSA took charge of overseeing these inspections from Local Authorities (who don’t want to take this work back). At that time, a ‘transitional’ discount scheme was applied to inspection charges, where the whole sector benefitted, but with a sliding scale of discounts (small discount for the largest abattoirs, large discount for the smallest). It has been in the interests of the whole abattoir sector to retain this discount as they all benefit, with many operating on thin financial margins. The total funding package for the discount scheme from the FSA has not increased in line with inflation, and FSA charges keep going up; the latest negotiation was on February 13, with FSA seeking to increase its charges by 25%.
Subsidy or discount?
Recently, coinciding (perhaps coincidentally) with a change of leadership at the FSA, the language used by the FSA to describe the discount has changed, and it is now being labelled as a subsidy. Strangely, there has never been an official articulation of the rationale for the ‘subsidy’, or of the desired outcomes. This is important, because with the Treasury demanding ‘full cost recovery’ and a presumption that the subsidy must come to an end, there has to be a clear understanding of what will be lost if the ‘subsidy’ is removed; and also a clear understanding of why the FSA inspection charges are so much higher than our closest trading partners in France and Ireland. In this blog, we will refer to the policy as a discount.
Matters are further complicated by the lack of Ministerial oversight of the FSA. It is a quango, answerable to Parliament, but without being under one government department, and one Minister. Parts of its work fall under Trade, parts under Health, and parts under Defra. Abattoirs come under Defra’s remit; and in 2024 Defra initiated some very welcome policies and capital grants in support of small abattoirs led by DD John Powell. Defra also engaged with the FSA over the process of the formal review of the discount. This process was initiated at the (public) FSA Board meeting on December 2024.
Defra's call for evidence and submission to FSA
Prior to the FSA Board meeting in December 2024, Defra put out a call for evidence to interested parties, which acted as a wake-up call that the discount was under threat. The Abattoir Steering Group (ASG), was alerted, and ASG members submitted responses. Soil Association Charity and Certification are members, and submitted a response, largely guided by ASG, and based on responses to a survey that we had put out to Licensees in 2022.National Craft Butchers (NCB) and the Sustainable Food Trust (SFT) had also put out a survey in 2020, investigating the connections between small scale producers, retail outlets, hospitality, and the small abattoirs.
Defra’s submission to the FSA Board in December, having taken into account the above responses, recommended that the FSA Board defer a decision on the discount whilst Defra undertook a deeper dive into the evidence; the following is from Defra’s recommendations put to the FSA Board; (this is all publicly available information).
‘While the call for evidence provided qualitative views on the need for support, we do not currently have all the quantitative evidence needed to deliver a full evaluation of the impacts of any changes to the discount on businesses
3.24. We need further evidence on the scale of any likely impact of any changes to the discount when considered in the context of overall production and the practicalities of delivery. There will be a number of difficult issues to resolve not least, for example, how we determine any criteria in relation to such a diverse industry. We therefore propose the following:
to support the next stage of the Spending Review process and build our evidence base about the industry, we plan to conduct a preliminary assessment of existing economic evidence.
to develop options, we plan to conduct a more detailed assessment of the case for support, along with stakeholder engagement and assessment of the wider societal and consumer benefits.
3.25. If support is justified, we need to consider how it should be delivered, this requires the more in-depth approach. Discounts on our charges may not be the most effective way to achieve the relevant objectives. There might be a case for the governments to target support directly at relevant operators. There may also be wider benefits to both government and industry if support is delivered in a different way, for example facilitating opportunity for improvements through simplification of IT and administrative requirements.’
Removing the discount: the impact on rural economies
Why is this ‘assessment of the wider societal and consumer benefits’ so important to Defra all of a sudden? The answer (if one was being cynical) is that the FSA is an arm's length ’non ministerial ‘body; but any decision that it takes carries a reputational risk to Defra. If the FSA decision is taken to remove the discount, leading to the collapse of the small abattoir sector, it will hit farmers and the local entrepreneurial rural economy very hard.
Removing the discount: the impact on Defra
In short, it will be a PR disaster, and although Defra may seek to deflect the blame on to the Treasury, that will not be enough to limit further reputational damage, and further erosion of its credibility with an increasingly disaffected rural community.
Combine this with the following policy issues
New Government: Stated priorities Rural Economic Growth, Strengthen Food Security, plus Animal Welfare and Circular Economy.
Farmer unrest: Defra will have to approach the sector effectively needing help to get out of a very bad PR situation.
Trade: Adverse trade deals will be coming into play, with cheaper red meat imports from Australia and New Zealand. UK farmers will increasingly need access to added value local markets; all local food processing hubs will become vitally important.
Public Procurement: Defra policy is clear that public procurement will go ahead; but although we don’t have enough access to detail around local procurement, it is clear that procurement for local and low impact food will be prioritised.
Trends: Consumer choice and growth in Independent and online retailers (in Organic, up 30% since 2020).
Food security: Rising threats re disruption of supply chains (see Just in Case: 7 steps to narrow the UK civil food resilience gap, from the National Preparedness Commission, written by Professor Tim Lang and others). Covid, Ukraine war, Gulf unrest, Cybercrime/Ransomware.
Environment Policy: ELMs is encouraging rare breeds, organics and nature friendly farming. These farmers need access to premium markets. If abattoirs close, they lose this, and a potential growth story goes.
Our Next Steps
There is a list of things to do below which need to be done by the end of March, so there's no time to lose. We can then decide whether to use the information to assist Defra to make the case for retaining the discount (if we are sure that it will be making the case), or to mount a vigorous public campaign.
What we need to do now
Informally the Defra team is aware that the ASG membership will be submitting a vigorous defence of the discount; Defra does not want to be seen as ‘anti-farmer’ and there are high profile celebrities like Jeremy Clarkson who are interested parties. The ASG is considering its position; many members want to mount a public campaign; but getting good case studies and evidence of impact is critical to any success. I am liaising with several organisations to work out the best contribution that we can make in terms of public communications.
Real life Information gathering
We are working with SFT and other membership organisations to send out a survey to farmers asking them to quantify their usage of the small abattoir sector. This survey should be going out week beginning 17 February 2025
AIMS and Craft Butchers will be gathering information from the sector, specific to the FSA charges. This is already in motion.
Case Studies: ASG is identifying examples of where this FSA decision could destroy local supply chains. Some will be specifically organic. Where this is the case , we will be working collaboratively to gather information from as wide a range of people as possible; with as much a focus on the farms, independent retailers, and customers, as on the abattoirs themselves.
Contact us
We need to hear from you! Please send your reactions, information, ideas through to us! Contact me directly at asteele@soilassociation.org.
Contact your MP
There is no doubt that it would be very useful if you could alert your MP!
Thank you
Thank you for taking the time to read through this briefing. We will be updating it regularly.