LOCAL producers of ‘meat to eat’, as opposed to store cattle, are calling for Tynedale to establish its own abattoir to shorten the distance their animals have to travel for slaughter.

Many farmers and smallholders in the area currently send their stock down to Bishop Auckland, in County Durham, or over the Scottish Border to Lockerbie – which, due to the mileages involved is both expensive and, not the best animal welfare practice.

For example, Lucy and James Howard send their Dexters from Longsyke Farm, near Once Brewed, all the way down to Simpsons abattoir in Cocklaw, near Bishop Auckland, which is almost a 100-mile round-trip. Lucy said there was a big gap for a local abattoir dealing in cattle.

“It would be a significant improvement in terms of welfare and efficiency and I’m sure there would be a great deal of support for it,” she said.

“Many small producers are trying to market high welfare meat and the slaughtering process is such an important part of this. We spend so much time and effort rearing our extensively grazed, outwintered cattle, then have to put the steers in a trailer and travel for over an hour to our chosen slaughterhouse.

“We are confident that the rearing of our grass fed suckler herd is as good as it can be, but this final journey is one area that could be improved – the one link in the chain we’re not entirely happy with.”

The Howards used to send their Dexters to Nattrass’, in Weardale, but transferred to Simpsons, which is praised in the Good Abattoir Guide , when Nattrass’ ceased handling cattle.

Lucy added: “Travelling with livestock requires careful thought and planning. We prefer two people to travel to the slaughterhouse in case of any hiccups on the road and this is costly in terms of man hours.

“Having a local abattoir would make a tremendous difference to the development of our business. With more butcher‘s shops closing every year, I’m sure there are the skills out there to staff a high quality facility in Haltwhistle and meet the needs of local farmers and those members of the public interested in the welfare of the animals they eat.”

Wendy Bond, of Greenhead, who established and ran the Hadrian’s Wall Farmers’ Market for 10 years, is a keen advocate of those producers who would like to see an abattoir set up at Haltwhistle.

“We want something close by, for the sake of the animals quite apart from the sake of the people. The amount of petrol or diesel that is used is phenomenal. You have got to take them, you’ve got to leave them – then go back to pick up the carcasses and go back again,” she said.

“That destroys straight away any profit you might have. Haltwhistle would be the perfect place with the A69 running through. It would be brilliant. “It’s something European development money should go into. Really all it needs is for one business to put up half and for someone like LEADER or local enterprise partnerships to put in the other half and away it would go.

“It would be such a good employment opportunity for people and we could have such a wonderful local food industry if there were a good abattoir. I’m sure it would support more people rearing animals for food. It’s just got everything going for it, it really has.”

Liam McNulty and Lauren Harrison, of Willowford Farm, Gilsland, run around 120 breeding Romney sheep.

“We have to take ours to Lockerbie as that’s the nearest organic place and it takes about an hour. It would be much better if there was a local one – we would support it wholeheartedly. It would be much better in terms of animal welfare.”

Over the past 30 years, many smaller slaughterhouses have become economically unviable – partly because the regulations were, commendably, made more stringent following the BSE and foot-and-mouth crises. British Retail Consortium (BRC) accreditation became tougher with ever-higher standards and tougher auditing.

Having a full-time vet and a full-time meat inspector is now a legal requirement – all costs that have to be met by the slaughterhouse.

The rise of the supermarkets and consequent demise of family butchers has also had a massive impact. In 1985 a thousand operational abattoirs serviced a meat and livestock industry in the UK with over 21,000 retail butchers shops.

However, in the next two decades the number of retail butchers fell below 6,800 and there were only 285 abattoirs- an average closure rate of about 21 slaughterhouses a year.

Supermarkets were controlling over 80 per cent of the UK’s household sales of meat and most had rationalised their meat supply chains with their buyer power concentrated in the hands of the large abattoir companies who supply the supermarkets through dedicated plants.

Susan Aglionby, another organic farmer, who runs a small herd of Longhorn cattle and 50 greyface mules at The Croft, at Houghton, a 40-hectare organic farm lying just outside Carlisle, also uses the Lockerbie abattoir.

“I care about my animals and I want to know how they are treated which I why I fully support more local abattoirs,” she said.

pauline.holt@hexham-courant.co.uk