In the 1970s there were 2,500 abattoirs in the UK – today there are only 203. Wicked Leeks’s Anna Zuurmond takes a closer look at the ways in which farmers have been affected by the loss of their local abattoir, as well as what this means for consumers and access to higher-welfare, organic meat.

This article was originally published in Wicked Leeks magazine.

The number of abattoirs in the UK has diminished from 2,500 in the 1970s to just 203 today, meaning animals are travelling further and longer to slaughter and fewer farmers are able to sell quality meat direct to consumers.

A recent survey of over 850 farmers by the Sustainable Food Trust (SFT) found that many small farmers would struggle to sell direct to consumers if their local abattoir were to close – smaller abattoirs offer services like private kill, where farmers’ own meat is returned to them by the abattoir for them to sell.

In the absence of this service, many farmers would be forced to sell their meat directly into wholesale markets, which over 58 per cent of farmers in the SFT’s survey deemed to be unprofitable for their business; the knock-on effect then being that consumers have less access to quality local meat.

The survey found that, as a direct result of small abattoir closure forcing them to use larger facilities, 18 per cent of farmers have already been forced to sell off their livestock, and almost a fifth of organically certified respondents (19%) said they have had to stop selling their meat as organic due to lack of access to organic abattoir services.

Challacombe farm, based on Duchy of Cornwall land on Dartmoor, Devon, has 20 Welsh Black Bullock cows and 200 Shetland X Icelandic sheep, a small, hardy and non-commercial rare breed which they keep mainly to manage their land.

They use local abattoir Gages, just nine miles down the road in Buckfastleigh, for all of their private kill, and then send on the skins to Devonia Sheepskins tannery, a further two miles down the road and the oldest tannery in Britain, to be made into rugs.

“The only journey the animals take off the farm is to the abattoir, and we know exactly what happens to them,” said farm co-owner Mark Owen, who runs the farm with his wife, Naomi Oakley.

Meanwhile, 10 per cent of the 850 farmers surveyed travelled more than 60 miles with their livestock, and many voiced concerns about how, if animal travel time to abattoir increased, it would undermine high on-farm welfare standards, which consumers also want and are willing to pay more for.

“The local abattoir is essential. We take the sheep in the morning, in the afternoon the skins are ready to pick up. You go down there and you see how hard everyone is working, the care that is taken, nothing is hanging around for too long, it’s very quiet in the holding pens – no banging and crashing,” said Owen.

Challacombe Farm’s livestock is organic and 100% grass-fed, with welfare approved by ‘A Greener World’, a strict certification only given when livestock have all-year-round access to fields.

As a result of their local abattoir, which they travel to most weeks, and the tannery next door, Challacombe is able to sell skins and meat direct to people “who understand how we produce [our meat], the impact on the environment, and animal welfare”.

The Lang family, who have run Gages abattoir alongside Dartmoor Butchers for more than 80 years through multiple generations, explained how they offer a mixture of private kill to local farmers, particularly rare breeds, as well as selling local farm meat at their Butchers, and to Riverford.

“Obviously we have complete control in what we’re getting”, said the Lang family, “we didn’t want to start just buying in stuff. We’ve always done our own thing.”

Succession issues

One of the greatest challenges to both their abattoir and Butchers is staffing, particularly with finding young people who are interested, and the Langs said this is something that is “unlikely to improve”.

The average age of abattoir owners in the UK is between 60-70, and getting young people into the industry and succession planning has been a key issue for many small abattoirs, and a factor in the closure of some.

Everything from the lairage, where livestock are held in pens before slaughter, to moving animals and carcasses, makes working in an abattoir a very physically demanding role, particularly with an ageing workforce, even with mechanisation of certain elements.

There are specialised government-funded meat apprenticeships for roles such as butchers, meat processors and abattoir technicians, however between 2019-2025 only 22 abattoir apprentices completed their apprenticeships (just five a year) despite the fact that 82 per cent of abattoirs and butchers said they would welcome an apprentice according to a 2023 National Craft Butchers survey.

A big part of the battle, perhaps unsurprisingly, is making the meat sector an attractive place for young people to want to work, despite the fact it’s a highly skilled job.

Sarah Dyke, Lib Dem MP for Glastonbury and Somerton, who is responsible for securing a debate in parliament for small abattoirs, said: “There should be more on the curriculum on food and farming – all that connection with food, but with rearing animals as well.”

Perhaps abattoir trips for school children would be a step too far, but some kind of secondary school education on how meat is produced is integral to an understanding of food provenance as well as forming a surer route into the meat industry and its potential career paths.

Sheepskins for sale

The falling price that abattoirs get for sheepskins and hides has also been a key driver in small abattoir collapse. The Lang family told me that 15 years ago, you would get £6-8 for a sheepskin, whereas now you have to pay £1.60 per skin to have them taken away, whilst cow hides have reduced from around £45-50 per hide to £4-5 in the last 15 years.

Over this short period of time, skins and hides have gone from a valuable byproduct, that many farmers say covered the operational costs of slaughter, to an additional cost-to-bear for farmers, particularly as collectors and renderers charge small abattoirs more to carry out small scale collections of skins and hides.

The Langs commented on how this is largely a result of the Chinese and Turkish markets which account for 84 per cent of the value of all worldwide sheepskin exports, adding that, “There’s no UK market for it now.”

As a result of this cost, only around 1 per cent of UK sheepskins are believed to be used, with over 15 million discarded every year, and some abattoirs even paying for hide shredders to effectively dispose of it themselves.

Owen told me how people “absolutely love” their organic sheepskin rugs, produced at Devonia Sheepskins, one of few remaining of 21 UK tanneries; a small-scale example which shows how skins and hides could be viewed as a valuable and beautiful byproduct once again and help the meat industry close that loop.

This is before we factor in the other costs that consumers don’t see – all the waste, such as entrails, that gets sent to renderers to be processed into biofuel and pet food, as well as the compulsory staining and later incineration of certain parts of the animals for disease prevention.

Whilst it’s not the loveliest conversation to have over your Sunday roast, it’s another reason, along with how an animal is reared, that a consumer may consider paying a bit more for your small-scale butcher-bought lamb that was killed in a small abattoir, rather than something that was both industrially produced and killed.

Support for local abattoirs

A huge win for abattoirs this year was the retention of the FSA (Food Standards Agency) 90 per cent discount on veterinary charges for small abattoirs – a massive relief when the hourly rate of on-site vets, who must oversee the abattoir at all times, increased by 17.7 per cent in 2025 alone.

Now the Abattoir Sector Group (ASG) are calling for more ring-fenced funding support for this sector.

This could include the reopening of the Small Abattoir Fund, a £4m budget opened under the conservatives, of which just over a 1m has ever been allocated, and has now been discontinued.

This is particularly important in keeping small famers in business, but also in keeping prices of quality meat accessible for consumers, with one third of farmers surveyed by the SFT saying they will have to push meat price hikes onto consumers if slaughtering charges by the FSA continue to rise.

Sarah Dyke MP has said that the whole relationship with the FSA must go further:

“I want to see a marked change in the FSA’s relationship with these businesses. Yes, of course food safety is paramount but we’ve got to look at it differently. Small abattoirs do a different job to high output abattoirs. They deal with rare breeds, organic, bespoke slaughtering – that job needs to be recognised.”

She criticised the punitive nature of surprise arbitrary inspections by the FSA, and the lack of administrative co-operation in working with smaller businesses.

“You need big abattoirs for supermarkets and small abattoirs for small producers”, says Mark Owen from Challacombe, as a larger facility is not designed to take the 2-3 animals that he’ll bring to slaughter.

This debate becomes paramount as we see an influx of international trade deals on meat, including a trade deal with the US that will lift tariffs and open up the UK market to US beef, whilst ASDA has proudly started stocking Uruguayan beef.

These threaten to undercut the prices of UK meat, just as milk and butter imports did in late autumn last year, causing a tumbling farmgate price, and many consumers unknowingly buying US butter and milk from supermarkets.

It’s therefore all the more integral that we support our local infrastructure – from farm to abattoir, to butcher, to tannery – and ensure that the small businesses working together to provide consumers with high-welfare British meat will not become a figment of the past.

 

To find out more about the SFT’s work with local abattoirs, click here.

Featured image by Christian Kay.

The SFT’s Senior Research Officer, Imogen Crossland, highlights the case study farmers featured in our Abattoir Users Survey 2025 report, which provide tangible examples of how abattoirs support diversification, profitability and resilience for farm businesses.

Concerns are growing around the provenance, ethics and sustainability of meat. For those who choose to eat it, knowing how and where the animals have been reared is increasingly important, especially as the environmental, animal welfare and human health consequences of industrial livestock production continue to be made clear. But the opportunity to choose traceable, locally sourced meat is under threat. Across the country, small abattoirs are closing at an alarming rate, with serious knock-on effects for farmers, local retailers and the communities they serve.

Earlier this year the Sustainable Food Trust, alongside the Soil Association and Rare Breeds Survival Trust, surveyed 850 livestock farmers across the UK, many of them operating agroecological systems with native breeds, to understand the importance of small, local abattoirs for their businesses. We asked what the impact might be of further abattoir closures, rising slaughter costs and the loss of key services often provided by smaller abattoirs, such as provision for particular breeds and species, or ‘private kill’, where the meat is returned to the producer to be sold directly to customers.

While the results revealed the importance of local abattoirs for livestock farms of all shapes and sizes, the dependency was greater for some than others, especially among those supplying local markets. If their abattoir were to close, 43% of farmers said they would no longer be able to sell their meat locally, while 29% would consider shutting their meat business altogether. Sadly, the impact of abattoir closures is already being felt, with a third of respondents having seen their local abattoir close in the last five years.

More than half of farmers (58%) believed their business would no longer be profitable without the ability to sell direct or locally. For many, this is because selling through short supply chains, including farm shops, farmers markets and meat boxes, combined with adding value to their meat and other by-products, are integral to their business viability.

The case studies featured in our survey report provide tangible examples of how abattoirs support diversification, profitability and resilience for farm businesses.

Farm retail: Essington Farm Shop, Wolverhampton

Essington Farm Shop has been retailing quality home-grown produce since 1892. Its award-winning butchery and deli are central to the business, accounting for more than half of its annual turnover.

The farm shop has seen steady growth, with butchery sales rising by 10% year-on-year.

Much of this success is attributed to growing customer concern about how meat is produced, especially around health, environmental impact and animal welfare. Demand for traditional counter service by a butcher has also increased, driven both by renewed interest in home cooking and the limited choice of pre-packed meat products in supermarkets.

Access to their local abattoir is fundamental to the continuing success of Essington Farm’s retail operations. Pigs and cattle reared on the farm, alongside livestock from neighbouring farms, are slaughtered there before the carcases are returned to the butchery for processing. If the abattoir were to close, the impact would be severe, risking the loss of around £2.25 million worth of sales and over 20 redundancies. Essington Farm would effectively lose its ability to meet the strong demand for high-welfare, local meat among the community.

SFT’s Head of Policy and Campaigns – and lead on our small abattoirs work – Megan Perry, explores the decline in people opting to work in skilled labour roles in the food sector, including slaughtering and butchery. From systemic shocks like Brexit and COVID-19 which have affected labour supply and demand, to a lack of funding for training, Megan takes a deeper look at the reasons behind this decline and what can be done to protect the future of the UK’s small abattoirs and butchers.

While many organisations are working to reconnect people with where their food comes from, educating children through farm visits and reviving an interest in food production as a viable career, there is an important part of the food chain that often gets overlooked. For sustainable livestock farming and local meat production to be viable, we need a network of abattoirs and butchers. However, the decline in people opting to work in the local meat sector and the loss of heritage and artisan skills such as butchery, has widespread implications for food security, sustainability and rural economies. This was the focus of a recent paper by the Sustainable Food Trust and the Abattoir Sector Group presented to Defra’s Small Abattoir Task and Finish Group.

The UK’s food supply chain contributes over £128 billion to the UK economy every year and provides employment for over four million people. The meat processing sector employs around 97,000 people and directly supports 50,000 farmers, with skilled butchers making up 40% of the workforce, according to the British Meat Processors Association.

However, according to the Food Standards Agency (FSA), systemic shocks such as Brexit and COVID-19 have affected labour supply and demand. The number of workers going into voluntary redundancy and early retirement doubled in recent years. In 2021, the impact of COVID was clear – there were 953,000 job vacancies in the UK, over half of them in the food and drink sector.

Estimates suggest that one in four food and drink industry workers are due to retire within the next 10 years, which amounts to over one million people leaving the industry. The BMPA has highlighted that the rise in worker losses has mainly affected skilled worker roles such as veterinarians and butchers. These roles are also some of the hardest to recruit and training is extensive and takes a long time.

Staff shortages have been a concern for some abattoirs, disrupting operational capacity and contributing to closures. National Craft Butchers’ (NCB) 2023 survey found that 20% of respondents had changed their business hours in the previous 12 months, with 22% pointing to staffing issues. For those looking to set up new abattoirs, the availability of staff can be a concern.

The average age of small abattoir operators is between 60-70. The NCB survey found that 56% of respondents do not have a succession plan, yet 50% were aged 56 or above and 26% plan to retire in the next five years.

Despite a clear need for workers in the sector, since 2019 only 22 abattoir apprentices completed their apprenticeship – that works out at about five per year, an all-time low. Only 33% of respondents to the NCB survey were currently employing an apprentice, although 82% said they would welcome one.

This problem is not helped by lack of funding, with Level 2 Butchery apprenticeships receiving £10k funding each, but only £6k available to the equivalent level in slaughtering apprenticeships. This makes it economically unviable for training providers, particularly if they must travel to remote rural abattoirs. Further, there is now only one training provider in the whole of the UK for smaller abattoirs.

“For sustainable livestock farming and local meat production to be viable, we need a network of abattoirs and butchers. However, the decline in people opting to work in the local meat sector and the loss of heritage and artisan skills such as butchery, has widespread implications for food security, sustainability and rural economies.”

There are many reasons why people are not choosing to go into a career in the slaughtering and butchery sector, not least because it can have a negative public image and gets little acknowledgement despite being an incredibly important and skilled role.

However, the decline of small abattoirs due to rising costs and a challenging regulatory environment means people are reluctant to begin a career in the sector, and family businesses are not being handed down. When we surveyed small abattoirs in Wales recently, one owner told us he had wanted to pass the business on to his son, but he felt it was not viable and his son had gone to work elsewhere.

There is also a disconnect between education, careers advice and staffing needs. With the Food Technology A-Level scrapped in 2016, there has been a lack of emphasis on food supply chain careers and training.

In our aforementioned paper on the skilled labour shortage, we reported recent conversations between the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS) and a small group of young people under the age of 22 who are at the beginning of their further education and career paths. They highlighted how little the food sector is regarded as a viable ‘job for life’, despite living in an area dominated by food manufacturers, including two local butchers. They said the food industry was never presented as a possible career path at school. There was also an attitude that butchery was male-dominated.

However, some progress is being made. The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IFATE) are now looking to review the slaughtering apprenticeship and are positively engaging with the sector to get their ideas and input.

Some members of the Abattoir Sector Group are also holding conversations with educational institutions and experts to explore new ideas for connecting young people with the full range of career options. This could include better connections between agricultural colleges and the processing part of the supply chain, with livestock farmers also being able to train in butchery or slaughtering, if this was something they were interested in.

Ultimately, a resilient small abattoir network is essential for the future of local meat production. And it’s the unsung heroes who work in abattoirs that are providing the vital services that so many farmers, retailers, restaurants and countless other businesses benefit from.

For more information, please see our paper.

The Sustainable Food Trust is working to connect people with the story behind their food, including promoting careers in food and farming, through our newly launched Beacon Farms Network. We are also working as part of The Agroecology Learning Collective to signpost agroecological learning opportunities (including training and apprenticeships) and support the development of new courses which fill gaps in current training provision.

We talk about the value of sustainably-sourced local meat a lot, but what about the value of by-products? Abattoirs once received £45 per hide and £6.50 per lamb skin but are now paying significant money to have by-products taken away. Megan Perry, our Head of Policy & Campaigns, explains how the value of hides continues to decrease while the costs of processing have increased, and what can be done to resurrect this dwindling sector.

While the importance of smaller abattoirs has begun to be recognised for their essential role in producing local meat, food security and high animal welfare, what happens to the by-products in such a system is little talked about. Rendering, tanning and incinerating are not generally hot topics of conversation! Yet the world of animal by-products (ABP) has a direct bearing on the local meat supply chain.

The Sustainable Food Trust recently put together a paper for the Defra Small Abattoir Task and Finish Group, co-chaired by the Abattoir Sector Group of which the SFT is a founding member. This paper outlined the stark reality of smaller abattoirs and how costs associated with ABP are impacting their viability. Animal by-products are the materials from animals that are not intended for human consumption and include products such as bones, skin, hooves, horns and blood, as well as whole carcases of animals that cannot be processed for humans. Products are categorised according to risk, and this determines what they can be used for. Some uses include rendering to form protein for animal feed, or anaerobic digestion to produce biogas.

Traditionally, the fifth quarter was a valuable source of income to the abattoir, often providing the ‘operating’ profit for the business. Abattoirs once received £45 per hide and £6.50 per lamb skin, which was enough to cover the slaughter cost. This has now turned on its head and abattoirs pay significant amounts to have ABP taken away, including hides and skins.

Most smaller abattoirs have their ABP collected and processed by rendering companies. Unlike larger abattoirs which have economies of scale, the amount of ABP from a smaller abattoir is relatively small and the abattoir is often located in a rural or remote area, and with the significant decline of other smaller abattoirs there is little chance of collectors visiting multiple operators in one go. This results in collectors and renderers levying high charges and leads smaller abattoirs to ‘bulk up’ their ABP into one container, meaning they are reluctant or unable to begin separating out the ABP for further processing themselves. The consolidation of the ABP processing industry has left small abattoirs with little or no choice as to which companies they use and therefore they must accept whatever the collector charges. This can amount to thousands of pounds per month and is often flagged as one of the mounting costs contributing to small abattoir closures.

Global markets and events have a major impact on the value of ABP. For example, prior to the war in Ukraine, Russia was one of the biggest importers of UK sheepskins. There are also major export challenges due to Brexit, where labelled hides were once sent to Europe on a trailer, there is now 40 pages of documentation to be completed.

Stringent regulation following the BSE outbreak led to the decline of many traditional uses of by-products. The categorisation of ABP and separate infrastructures for processing by category contributed to consolidation of the processing sector. We have been campaigning for the UK Government to apply to the World Organisation for Animal Health for negligible BSE risk status (rather than our current controlled risk status) and we are grateful that this is now being taken forward.

“The consolidation of the ABP processing industry has left small abattoirs with little or no choice as to which companies they use and therefore they must accept whatever the collector charges. This can amount to thousands of pounds per month and is often flagged as one of the mounting costs contributing to small abattoir closures.”

Potential new due diligence regulation, the Forest Risk Commodity Regulation (FRCR), could also have an impact in future as it will prohibit larger companies with a global turnover of more than £50m from using agricultural commodities that have not been produced in line with local laws. Companies will have to provide traceability and evidence that commodities have not been produced on deforested land. This will apply to both beef and leather products.

Reviving local and sustainable leather

While ABP processing represents an entire sector in itself, the production of leather is worth a special focus. The current situation has been described as ‘dire’ by those working in the hide sector. It is believed there were around 4,000 tanneries in the UK in the early 1900s but the sector collapsed in the 1980s with the rise of China and India providing cheap manufacturing and supply chains, coupled with rising costs of more stringent effluent regulations in the UK. By 1983 there were 125 tanneries and by 2015 there were 23. Today, just a small handful of remaining facilities have the capability to process raw hides and skins from the start, and a small number of additional facilities work with material that is already part-processed.

The value of hides has collapsed even further in recent months while the costs of processing (including salt, energy and transport) have gone up. Hides are a global commodity and UK hides currently must compete on a global market. There is a glut in hides globally due to the rise in plastic and other synthetic materials and perhaps also due to an overproduction of cattle, globally, through industrial farming systems. Over half of British hides and nearly all sheepskins are exported or thrown away. Even large abattoirs are paying to have hides taken away as waste, while small abattoirs are spending thousands of pounds purchasing hide shredders so they can be put into landfill.

There is also a huge disconnect between the demands on the fashion industry for sustainability and traceability, and how these are reflected in the leather supply chain. For most leather producers or users, it is not currently possible to trace leather back to the farm of origin or to know how the animal has been reared, and yet the desire for that information is growing.

British Pasture Leather have been working to address this issue since 2021, taking hides from certified Pasture for Life farms to create a supply of traceable and sustainable leather, marketed to designers and brands of leather goods. They also recently launched their ‘Service for Farmers’, offering to get hides vegetable tanned (which involves using natural vegetable tannins to alter the protein structure of the hide, rather than chrome tanning which is seen as environmentally damaging) and returned to those same farms as supple, fully grain quality leather, suitable for producing a range of products from upholstery to footwear. Adding value in this way could be an important part of livestock farm viability in future.

However, what is missing is the capacity to produce this leather in the UK at a volume and cost that would result in a commercially viable price.

“Over half of British hides and nearly all sheepskins are exported or thrown away. Even large abattoirs are paying to have hides taken away as waste, while small abattoirs are spending thousands of pounds purchasing hide shredders so they can be put into landfill.”

One of the main challenges British Pasture Leather is facing, is the bottleneck caused by diminished tanning capacity – the business relies on one tannery in the UK that can process their hides. The capacity of that facility is limited, which also makes the production cost high.

Improving local infrastructure is therefore essential to scaling up the sector. Alongside British Pasture Leather, a small vanguard of people are now at the leading edge of the revival of small-scale leather production, including Billy Tannery, who process goat and deer skins, and Cotmarsh Tannery which has been awarded funding to establish a micro tannery and teaching facility. But further identifying where there is missing infrastructure, particularly for the collection and storage of hides along with tanning capacity, is urgently needed. And British Pasture Leather feels that collaboration to use local hides in local leather production needs to be established to successfully realise this vision.

Alongside this, the founders of British Pasture Leather say that a mentality change is needed and that a vision for leather has to be married to agriculture and viewed from farm to finished material. The origin and production of leather must be better understood and appreciated. Good quality, sustainably sourced and traceable leather with a story, can advance a message about how we want to farm. Leather is emblematic of the agricultural system and landscape from which it came.

With major challenges facing both smaller abattoirs and livestock farmers, anything we can do to add value, improve viability and create a sustainable, local product will be welcomed. Defra have been willing to explore this issue and help identify solutions and we look forward to discussing this further through the Abattoir Sector Group in the coming months.

The SFT is fresh back from the Groundswell festival where our team was out in force. We hosted four sessions at this year’s ‘Glastonbury of agriculture’, covering everything from holistic metrics to working with wool. Here, Executive Director, Adele Jones, shares some of her reflections and conversations from Lannock Manor Farm. 

Groundswell is one of my favourite events of the year – it brings together, in a judgement-free way, both people who have been working in this space for a very long time and those who are just discovering the world of regenerative agriculture. Leave your preconceptions at the gates, you can really feel an atmosphere of coming together and excitement from everyone wanting to learn and share experiences. Not only is there the opportunity to go to some amazing talks (bodybuilder Eddie Abbew was a highlight for me, although unquotable here!) but also have some fun and chew the cud over a few beers.

Small Abattoirs: Progress and Hope

Our first session focused on small abattoirs, where we discussed the progress of two DEFRA funds. The first fund, The Smaller Abattoir Fund, aims to help existing abattoirs with sustainability and infrastructure improvements. The second fund is a new initiative to support the construction of abattoirs in areas that are lacking in services.

This second fund is particularly exciting for a campaign that has often faced challenges. It was uplifting to share some hope, especially through inspiring case studies. Robyn Munt, NFU County Chair, discussed her plans to build a new abattoir on the Isle of Wight, and agroecologist, Jonty Brunyee, shared his efforts to save Long Compton abattoir. The interest from those looking to set up facilities on potential new sites was encouraging, giving us hope that we can rebuild local abattoirs as part of a broader effort to decentralise our food systems. This aligns with ambitious goals such as Labour’s manifesto target of achieving 50% local food procurement within the next five years.

Wool, Hides and Skins: Sustainable Innovations

Our next session focused on wool, hides and skins – topics that took centre stage at Groundswell for the first time. When discussing food and farming, we often overlook the sustainable and circular nature of animal and plant by-products. Wool and leather are increasingly being revived and embraced in the fashion industry, especially by premium brands. However, innovative uses in the building sector and products like wool tree guards should also be highlighted. To make these products competitive, we need to find ways to reduce costs – a tax on plastic could be a good start.

From grazing livestock to local abattoirs, our sessions at this year’s Oxford Real Farming Conference were a chance to share some of our latest work and to connect with others who are pushing for positive change. In this article, our Head of Policy and Campaigns, Megan Perry, reports back from the discussion on the future of local abattoirs.

Our session at the Oxford Real Farming Conference on ‘Local Abattoirs: Funding, Future Models and Next Steps’ could not have come at a better time, hot on the heels of the launch of the Smaller Abattoir Fund. The progress and positive tone of the session was in contrast to the first session we held at ORFC about abattoirs in 2018, when the late Richard Young launched our report ‘A Good Life and A Good Death: Relocalising Farm Animal Slaughter’. The shocking reality that our small abattoir network was on the brink of collapse kickstarted a campaign which saw widespread support and has resulted in small abattoirs being treated as a priority issue by Defra.

The session was expertly chaired by Baroness Sue Hayman, previously Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Sue is also President for the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, one of the members of the Abattoir Sector Group, and understands the critical importance of small abattoirs for native breed farmers.

Attending this year’s Oxford Real Farming Conference earlier this month, SFT Content Editor, Alicia Miller, shares more on the sessions that took place, in her round-up article on this year’s event.

After the excess of Christmas and New Year, the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) is always a good place to come back down to earth, contemplate the coming year and think deeply about what it might hold. With COP28 taking a big step forward in recognising food and farming as a critical part of the issues we face as a planet, it left much food for thought to pick over at the ORFC.

In our series of butcher profiles, food and farming writer, Marianne Landzettel, meets butchers from across the UK who have built their business around high-welfare, sustainably produced meat. Marianne finishes her tour in North Wales, with a visit to Master Butcher, Ieuan Edwards, who runs a meat processing business with an award-winning shop and deli in the town of Conwy.

Ieuan Edwards is the youngest of three brothers who grew up on the family farm in the Conwy Valley in North Wales. Ieuan was 13-years-old when his father told him the farm wasn’t big enough for three boys and he would have to go into another business. “I was so relieved,” says Edwards, “I had no interest in farming – my Dad knew me well and made the right call. Even at that age, I loved buying and selling things, from bikes to fishing rods.”

In our series of butcher profiles, food and farming writer, Marianne Landzettel, meets butchers from across the UK who have built their business around high welfare, sustainably produced meat. David Gigli has made his shop a destination – it’s a butcher’s with a bistro serving breakfast and lunch (and occasionally dinner), where you can hear a talk on how to barbecue or take course on butchery, putting ‘diversification’ centre stage.

A perfectly cooked, deep green stem of purple sprouting broccoli tops the Golden Cleaver award winning ox cheek on mash. The barista style espresso machine gleams behind the counter. A doorway in the open brick wall allows customers a glimpse into the adjacent butcher’s shop with its polished white tiles, and a simple but elegant backlit sign tells you where you are: this is Gigli’s, a butcher’s, bistro and coffeeshop in Lytham St Annes, just south of Blackpool.

In our series of butcher profiles, food and farming writer, Marianne Landzettel, meets butchers from across the UK who have built their business around high welfare, sustainably produced meat. Farmer, Will Simkin, has developed an extensive farm shop with a tearoom and restaurant, selling his own pork and beef, along with vegetables produced on the farm.

On a rainy day in May, Wolverhampton may not present its prettiest side, but to meet farmer Will Simkin, we need to get a few miles out of the city. Essington Farm is situated amidst beautiful countryside with cattle and sheep grazing or resting under gnarled oak trees and well-maintained hedges along the narrow roads. If it weren’t for the signposts, first time visitors to the farm shop and butchers might well miss the entrance.

The shop is housed in a modern, one-storey building. Next to the entrance is an eye-catching display of bedding plants which are grown in one of the farm’s greenhouses. The farm’s tearoom and restaurant beckon, but we head straight for the shop – a beautiful, well-lit space with a wide choice of fruit and vegetables at the centre and two long deli and meat counters along the walls. Several butchers are serving the customers needing cooking advice, requesting special cuts or wanting to place an order. But most shoppers simply choose from the array of packed meats, sausages, burger patties and ready to cook items on the refrigerated shelves or are just here to pick up some readily packed pigs’ trotters or liver.

It’s not unusual for a farm shop to sell meat, but why did Simkin decide to open a ‘state-of-the-art’ butcher shop, I ask. “Because we already had the pigs,” says Simkin, “it was simply a logical next step.”

The farm was founded by Simkin’s great-great-grandfather in 1892, which makes Will Simkin a fifth-generation farmer. From the age of 14, he looked after a small group of pigs. There were always beef cattle, too, but Simkin liked working with the pigs. “They are friendly in nature, they are really clever and I found working with them rewarding,” he says.

After graduating from school, Simkin studied at Harper Adams University. He always knew that eventually he would return to Essington Farm, but first he wanted to see a bit more of the world. A gap year of just travelling didn’t feel right, so he took a job on a palm oil plantation in Papua New Guinea. In 2005, aged 23, he returned to the farm. His parents had opened a farm shop and restaurant in 1990 to directly market the fruit and vegetables the farm produced, and Simkin felt that adding a butchery would make financial sense.

With roughly 230 acres, the farm is relatively small, says Simkin, but “with pigs you can still work at scale, have a viable business and provide excellent animal welfare”. There are 70 Landrace and Duroc breeding sows which are crossed with Large White boars. The animals are kept in an extensive, outdoor system, which Simkin was happy to show us.

The large pasture is securely fenced and split into individual paddocks separated by electric fencing. The sows live in groups of six; only sows about to farrow (give birth) are moved to a ‘single occupancy’ paddock. Individual huts provide shelter and there is plenty of space to explore, soil to root through and mud to wallow in. The piglets can move freely under the electric fences. Unlike piglets brought up in confinement which are weaned at four weeks or even earlier, these pigs stay with their mums for about eight weeks until they are basically teenagers, and their mums are naturally ready to see them go. As we arrive, we are greeted by a ‘gang’ of about 10 (roughly two-month-old) piglets ‘patrolling’ near the gate; another group is sheltering under a tree. A younger piglet on a solitary excursion can’t quite remember who his mum is. He finds out quickly when he tries to suckle – sows don’t react kindly to kids from another litter wanting to feed.

To the side of the paddock are several large tents, each home to a group of 20 male or female weaned pigs. The canvas covers a spacious area with deep straw bedding, and towards the back is a good sized ‘run’ with one corner designated by the inhabitants as the ‘toilet’ – pigs are very clean and don’t soil their resting and feeding area. Because the animals have space to play and root, Simkin never has to dock the tails or treat with antibiotics, which is often necessary when piglets are weaned very early.

The pigs are slaughtered when they are between five and six months old. Every Thursday, a group of 20 to 25 is transported in a trailer with thick straw bedding to a small abattoir which is just over six miles away. They are slaughtered the same day and don’t have to spend a stressful night in an unfamiliar environment in close proximity to animals they don’t know. “I am really grateful that we have this small abattoir so close by, without it we couldn’t maintain a high welfare standard right to the end.”

Back at the shop, Simkin shows us the state-of-the-art butchery and cold storage space housed in a new purpose-built unit on the far side of the parking lot. Simkin has good butcher skills, but no formal training and he is far too busy with the many managerial tasks to regularly work in the butchery. At present, Essington Farm employs eight butchers. The abattoir returns whole sides of pig and beef to the farm, as well as livers and kidneys. The butchers cut and portion the meat, cure bacon, prepare sausages, burger patties and other products. Most of it is done in the butchery, but the shop has a bakery and a large kitchen, one side caters for the restaurant, the other processing food for the shop. “In 2016, we invested in new buildings and new equipment, after nearly 30 years the original farm shop looked quite tired,” says Simkin.

The floor space of the shop is now much larger. “We are right at the urban fringe here, many people come to do a regular weekly shop and we now have the space to provide for that. The tearoom is not the main attraction.” Everything the farm grows and produces is sold through the shop, all other items are sourced as locally as possible. Outside of the shop sits a trailer with an automated milk dispenser – the milk comes from a dairy just a mile up the road. “My father calls the shop the ‘one link food chain’.”

Will Simkin’s wife, Penny, drops by. “We have to make sure we don’t do too much,” she says. Initially, 34 different fruit and vegetables were grown on the farm; now the focus is on strawberries and other berries, plums and winter veg. With her background in finance and HR, she recruits staff and sorts out the rota – not an easy task with 70 full and part time workers and casual labour in the peak seasons.

Pork accounts for 40% of the meat sales: pig cheeks, livers, kidneys and even pig tails are in high demand, the latter mostly with customers of Chinese heritage. Pig brains on toast, however, is a Black Country speciality – one Will Simkin, personally, is not too keen on.

On average, around 3,000 customers come to the shop every week. How does Simkin see the future of the business? “We don’t want to grow massively and supply to supermarkets or the catering industry. We want to continue to provide quality, value and service,” says Simkin. What he would like to do is expand the beef herd. The farm is small and the available pasture is enough for 35 cow-and-calf pairs and youngstock. But in a purely grass-based systems, the animals take two years to reach their slaughter weight. The demand for beef at the shop is much higher and Simkin has to buy meat in. “It would be great if we could supply all the beef from our farm,” says Simkin. But apart from the money needed, it’s near impossible to buy or even just rent pastures being so close to an urban centre. For the time being the herd expansion will remain a dream.

 

With thanks to National Craft Butchers for helping us to develop this series. To find out more, visit NationalCraftButchers.co.uk.

Photos by @M.Kunz.