Volume 13: Industry Processes and Controls
2. The slaughtering industry
Summary of the slaughtering processes in 1986
Some features of the process

2.11 Figure 2.3 sets out the various stages in the slaughtering process.

Figure 2.3: The slaughter process

2.12 In a typical large slaughterhouse animals were unloaded from lorries into the 'lairage' or holding area. They were moved towards the slaughter hall in single file along passageways or 'races' and then fed one by one into a pen for stunning. Following stunning, the animal was shackled and hoisted onto an overhead rail - the slaughter line - which ran through the slaughter hall. The suspended animal was moved along the rail, until it was directly above a bleeding trough, where the large blood vessels in its neck were severed. Once bled, it was moved down the slaughter line to be dressed and cleaned. 'Dressing' meant converting the animal's carcass into sides of meat suitable for sale to butchers and others. It included the removal of the head, hide and internal organs (evisceration).

2.13 The carcass was examined for disease and damage at designated points in the butchery process, namely at the head removal and evisceration stages, and again after the carcass had been dressed. In export-approved slaughterhouses, the animals were also inspected before slaughter ('ante-mortem').

2.14 The smallest slaughterhouses sometimes used the 'cradle' system of dressing a carcass, instead of the line system described above. Mr Duncan Fry of MAFF told the Inquiry:

The cradle system obviously is the old way, where you literally take one animal at a time, stun it, bleed it, strip the skin off, take the innards out, and have them inspected, and then have that quartered, and then move on to the next animal. ¹

Some features of the process

2.15 No 'textbook' description such as the one set out below ² can convey the reality of killing a large beast and dissecting and disembowelling the carcass of a still warm animal. It is a bloody and messy business. For example, cutting a carcass in half with a band saw is not a precise, surgical procedure. Water and tissue are sprayed over the workers and the surrounding area. In July 1989, Mr Peter Lister of the Health and Safety Executive visited the largest slaughterhouse in the UK:

. . . the tour convinced me that gross exposure to blood is virtually unavoidable in the slaughtering business . . . This unit is well run and well kept but contamination of personnel is unavoidable despite the use of protective clothing. Skin exposure was very marked in some parts of the operation. ³

2.16 The difficulty of operating cleanly and with precision could be compounded in large slaughterhouses by the very high speed of the slaughtering and dressing processes. Mr Brian Etheridge, of the Association of District Councils, said in oral evidence that slaughterhouses:

. . . were extremely busy places where, as I recall at the time, many operatives were on piecework, so they were being encouraged to be as quick as they possibly could, that any hold-up on the line was quite significant in slaughterhouse operational terms. I think from memory the point being made to us was this - the environment of the slaughterhouse did not lend itself to enable this task to be performed in the way in which the regulators might have imagined they should be. ⁴

2.17 An example of just how fast cattle were processed by a large slaughterhouse comes from a report on EC-approved slaughterhouses in the UK by the Directorate-General for Agriculture of the EC. ⁵ One slaughterhouse inspected in 1991 had a slaughter rate of 60 cattle per hour on one slaughter line.

2.18 Problems arising from high line speed included the inability of workers to clean their hands and implements between carcasses, and the low priority given to ease of cleaning and disinfecting in the design of machinery intended to run at high speed. ⁶ The Inquiry also heard of problems aggravated by a 'very high turnover of staff and consequently a very low level of training' within the slaughterhouse industry. ⁷ Moreover, even in a well-run, properly supervised slaughterhouse with highly skilled and conscientious operatives, there will always be opportunities for human error.