Volume 13: Industry Processes and Controls
2. The slaughtering industry
Introduction

2.1 The slaughtering industry is central to the BSE story. Some of the legislative controls on BSE were designed to separate, at the slaughterhouse, potentially contaminated material that could infect humans and animals, either directly or indirectly, and to make special provision for the handling of this material. The introduction of these controls is discussed in vol. 5: Animal Health, 1989-96 and vol. 6: Human Health, 1989-96.

2.2 This chapter looks at key features of the industry before describing the various stages of the slaughtering process as they were in 1986. It describes how processes changed between then and 1996, with particular emphasis on changes resulting from the BSE-related legislation.