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.

Bonnie Welch, Head of Projects, and Megan Perry, Head of Policy and Campaigns, reflect on this year’s Oxford Real Farming Conference. Attending alongside colleagues from the Sustainable Food Trust and Global Farm Metric teams, they capture the energy, ideas and practical insights that emerged from sessions, workshops and conversations across ORFC.

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.

Guest writer, Anna Zuurmond, shares what her experience as a sales rep for organic veg box producer and supplier, Riverford, has taught her about our relationship to food and what people value most when deciding what to eat and where they source it from.

At first, I thought that being a veg box seller might be a little samey, with your daily spiel revolving around nothing but leeks and courgettes. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong about my job, which essentially involves touring around the west of England and encouraging people on the street, in shopping centres and at food festivals to try a Riverford seasonal organic veg box (as well as fruit, dairy, meat and other items).

The wonderful thing about exploring people’s relationships with food is that it quickly leads into conversations around lifestyles – and therefore life.

From new parents to grandparents, to students, full-time workers and retirees, from young couples to widowers to single mothers and fathers, what drives people to stop in the street and say yes (or no!) to trying a box?

The answer, I have found in my many chats, lies somewhere between ‘fear of’ and ‘desire to’.

Fear and desire in food choices

There is a fear of what pesticides and herbicides are doing to our bodies and to nature, a fear of losing local farmers, and a fear of letting big supermarkets win.

Then there is desire: a desire to know how our food is grown and to explore new ways of cooking and eating, a desire to support farmers, a desire to nourish our bodies and to restore nature.

Easily first and foremost in my daily conversations, is the topic of health.

“I didn’t care about me but now I’ve got kids, I feel like I’m poisoning them when I read about some of the chemicals used in food growing,” said a mother of two in Blackwood, Wales, in reference to the many pesticides used in conventional farming. Another professed: “We believe my one-year-old’s eczema is linked to pesticides.”

If it’s not children, it’s often a health scare. “We’re diabetic and have been told to eat more veg,” said an older couple in a Bristol shopping centre, variations of which I’ve heard countless times since starting this job.  Meanwhile, a 24-year-old woman in Birmingham told me how she’s changing her diet to see if it helps her chronic fatigue, having tried everything else. Straight after, a new mum shared how she was weening her baby off breastmilk but would only move to organic unhomogenised milk.

Many people, when asked in the street, “Do you like veg?”, answer with a little laugh or a sigh and go “We really should do more”. Often people are trying to break habits or slip healthy options into busy lifestyles whilst navigating fussy children (or themselves).

You then have the pretty serious health fans – including those within the ever-expanding gym and dieting scene – who want to tap into the benefits of fresh organic veg (and usually some milk and meat too).

Next come those with a desire to forget the supermarkets and say I stand with you to UK growers. People I speak with, are making a link between terrible farmer welfare, precarity and pay, and the food supply chain being orchestrated by multinational supermarkets. These people are also realising that much of what they buy from the supermarket is lacking when it comes to both taste and nutrition. They want out.

The environment, you might (or might not) be surprised to hear, tends to feature lower in people’s priorities. There is certainly frustration at supermarkets’ omni-present plastic packaging, and there is an understanding that intense monocultures sprayed with chemicals are wrecking nature and contributing to climate change. However, often fear of bad health is far more tangible to people than a decline in bees or soil degradation. What does that say about how we educate and campaign? That we must better teach the overlap: health and nature benefits are inseparable.

For most people, it’s not some great aggrandising idea of ethical, sustainable food that motivates them to switch to an organic veg box, but the appetite for something healthy and convenient that makes them feel good. Is that combination too much to ask?

Unfortunately, with the way our system currently stands, it can be.

The affordability question

So, let’s look at what stops people from switching to better veg. And I don’t just mean what stops people buying, but also what stops them even coming over and looking at a farm veg stand.

“I would love to, but I’ve got a family of five; I couldn’t afford to feed them this,” or “It’s just fancy veg, I go to Lidl”, are things I unsurprisingly hear on a regular basis. Comments along the lines of “That’s the expensive veg, isn’t it?” are frequently the first reaction before you even begin a conversation.

This response is entirely understandable – whatever way you look at it, and despite variations across products, fresh organic produce is often considerably more expensive than non-organic supermarket veg.

“Why is it cheaper for me to buy a crap ultra-processed meal than it is to buy this good quality fruit and veg?” exasperatedly asked a woman at the Cardiff Foodies festival. Her indignation at this imbalanced pricing is something we should all share.

As Patrick Holden, founder and CEO of the Sustainable Food Trust, has said, “We need to put right the price gap between quality and cheap food. We have a distorted economic system where apparently cheap food isn’t really cheap at all, because the costs behind it include contributing to climate change, destroying nature, negative effects on river pollution, reduced biodiversity and damage to public health.”

“Money is the only metric they accept, never mind the costs to our environment, wildlife, health and wider society,” says Riverford founder Guy Watson, in reference to supermarkets during the #GetFairAboutFarming campaign. These costs are not factored into price. Meanwhile, the benefits that healthy food delivers, are not renumerated.

Whilst this distorted pricing continues, for many people, the difference in cost remains prohibitive. Even for those that can afford organic veg, they don’t necessarily feel inclined to pay the extra money.

Bridging the knowledge gap

Last week, I had a previously homeless woman who had just been housed and set up with a bank card, who emphatically came over and wanted to try a small box every two weeks, telling me this was her first step in getting her life back on track.

These are the dreamy stories you want to be hearing, but they are often few and far between – and, to be quite frank, would take a great stretch of desire and finances for a lot of people.

For it’s not as simple as being literally unable to afford a £15, £18 or £25 seasonal organic veg box, but it’s a) thinking it’s worth it, and b) having the time, knowledge and skill base to know what to do with what’s inside it – which can include veg that’s less commonly seen on supermarket shelves.

“My kids just wouldn’t eat any of that, I’d end up chucking it,” families say to me daily, perfectly illustrating that scary possibility for many of throwing veg – and so money – away. Meanwhile, “How would you cook that?” is not uncommon when looking at a celeriac or a cardoon, or even things like broad beans or kale.

This ties into time. People get home late, work hectic jobs, some do shift work, and many have a busy home and family life when they get through the front door. Feeling confident and/or organised in your cooking, so that you can whip up something quick and healthy with what you’ve got, is not something everybody feels able to do. To tackle this, remember that you do have a lot of choice in what box you want, and in your first order with Riverford, you get a book full of simple seasonal recipes – and sometimes that’s enough to take a leap.

But the answers to making this widespread is of course a deeper-rooted education. Many I speak with are really keen to learn about how produce is farmed. They’re trying to dabble in a bit of growing, and kids will excitedly tell me how they’ve got some tomatoes or beans on the go in their back garden or at school. There are many working to bridge this knowledge gap, including the Sustainable Food Trust through its Beacon Farms programme, the Harmony Project through its work in schools, and Riverford through things like free recipes and newsletters.

If knowledge of growing and cooking can be expanded, alongside closing the price gap between low- and high-quality food, healthy organic produce could reach far more people while providing better returns for growers.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to enjoy the many anecdotes that the day job delivers. “Are artichokes anti-choke?” No, please don’t use it medically! “Is lamb’s lettuce vegan?” Yes…no lamb’s ears included! Keep them coming.

On April 4^th, the SFT participated in the launch of the Local Food Growth Plan. This plan was developed in partnership with the Landworkers’ Alliance (LWA), Sustain, Sustainable Food Trust (SFT), Pasture for Life (PfL) and the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC), and was funded by the Rothschild Foundation.

The aspiration was to create a roadmap that will boost demand, channel investment and direct effort into delivering a thriving local food sector across the UK. There are huge benefits of expanding and strengthening local food economies. Firstly, these food systems are deeply rooted in communities and help build connections between people and their food producers. This creates economic growth and expands employment opportunities. Secondly, it tends to be more sustainable with fewer food miles and higher rates of agroecological production. This benefits the wider resilience of our food system, which is critical in light of growing global tensions and the climate crisis. Lastly, it benefits public health by increasing access to fresh, nutritious food so that all citizens can access healthy and sustainable food. You can read more about the benefits of local food in Richard Kipling’s article for the SFT.

In order to successfully grow the local food sector, this plan set out actions that require engagement from a range of people and organisations. Developed through research and a consultation process, this report contains detailed recommendations and seven key priorities.

Seven priorities for a thriving local food sector

1. Establish regional local food growth plans: These documents would be guiding principles to inform and advance the expansion of local food within a region. They would be agreed with stakeholders from across the community, ranging from politicians to farmers, businesses and NGOs, and include a strong voice from citizens, and would direct investment and development in the local food sector.
2. Enable and invest in policies to support infrastructure: Both national and local government need to invest and support the infrastructure that underpins local food. This means protecting and expanding local markets and increasing regional processing facilities and mid-scale infrastructure. For example, protecting small abattoirs to enable small-scale local meat production to continue. The campaign to protect small-scale abattoirs is a long-running campaign of the SFT and you can learn more about it here.
3. Prioritise horticulture support in a national Horticulture Strategy: Defra has been promising to deliver a Horticulture Strategy for years now without any progress. This document would act as a clear commitment from Government that they valued British horticulture and were committed to increasing the supply, processing and distribution of fruit and vegetables to improve public diets through healthy, affordable and climate-friendly food.
4. Create a roadmap for meeting the commitment to public sector food procurement standards: The Government has made a strong commitment to increase the target of local and agroecological food in public procurement. But, to achieve that goal of 50%, supporting policies need to be put in place that can provide the necessary support to SMEs to submit bids, along with data collection and monitoring to ensure that the targets are met.

5. Enable decisive action to make food supply chains fairer for farmers: Part of the challenge for small and local suppliers is that the system is rigged against them. Large retailers hold too much power. The food supply chain needs to have greater transparency and accountability to ensure fairness. This requires expanding and reinforcing the powers of the Groceries Code Adjudicator, Agricultural Supply Chain Adjudicator and Food Crime Unit.
6. Recognise the vital role of local action and networks: Local food works because it is rooted in community and listens to the voices of citizens. To expand local food systems, we need to ensure that sustainable food partnerships, are established in every area, to advocate for the needs of the local food sector and enable collaboration between local farms, supply chains and citizens.
7. Promote influential marketing, targeted business and training support to help the local food sector thrive: People want to buy local food but currently it is often too challenging. There needs to be an effort to promote and connect citizens with local retailers so that we can build a grassroots movement to expand access to local food for all people.

The full Local Food Growth Plan is available here.

So how do we make this aspiration a reality? How do we grow local food in our communities? To do so, we need to catalyse change within our political leadership, and we need local and regional authorities to commit to meaningful action.

A manifesto for local food leadership in Bristol

That is why a collaboration between local food organisations in Bristol (where the SFT is headquartered) have developed a manifesto for the upcoming mayoral election for the West of England Combined Authority. This strategic authority encompasses Bath, Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North East Somerset. Once elected, the next Mayor will have a critical role in shaping how food is produced, distributed and accessed across the region. Through adopting key actions, the region can deliver healthier and more sustainable food for all.

The group is calling for a strategic review of food access across the region to help ensure that local and sustainable food is accessible to all citizens in the region. This review should engage with civil society, businesses and community groups to co-develop a Regional Food Plan that strengthens supply chain infrastructure and improves food resilience. Similar work is already ongoing with the Sustainable Food Places programme. This would be a legal document and would be used to inform spatial development strategies, ensuring that food accessibility is embedded in planning, development and the management of council-owned agricultural land. Central to this document would be the evaluation of St Phillips Market, a local fruit and veg market that has been operating for decades and is critical for the collection, storage and distribution of local food. Ahead of any closure of the market, there needs to be a clear plan for its replacement to ensure a thriving future for SMEs in the food sector for years to come.

Once this document was approved, it would prompt the investment needed to make it a reality. Many groups in the region have been struggling to access the funds that they need to improve public diets and tackle hunger. Through the public commitments within the Regional Food Plan, resources would be unlocked to improve the access to funding for initiatives addressing health inequalities and climate change impacts through food systems, with particular support for small, community-led organisations.

Lastly, one of the key areas that sits within the remit for the Strategic Authority is skills and training. Therefore, there is a huge opportunity for the incoming administration to invest in training, career development and business support for those entering the sustainable local food sector, fostering new green job opportunities and supporting SMEs. Investing in the next generation of growers and food producers will help ensure the viability of local food long into the future and support economic resilience by increasing employment and regional growth.

Call for action: Better food for all

These steps are critical for the region to achieve healthy and sustainable diets for all citizens. There are approximately 150,000 residents in the region who live in deprived communities with poor access to good food. Many low-income families can only afford to buy cheap food, which is often high in fat, salt and sugar, and this can damage their long-term health outcomes. Worse still, this food tends to be cheap because it is produced in a way that is environmentally damaging. Industrially produced food fails to account for its true-cost to the planet – something Patrick Holden, the SFT’s CEO, has spoken out about recently.

Our dependency on cheap food and the inequalities in our food system needs to change urgently, and we need our regional leaders to act. All families deserve to be able to access climate and nature-friendly food that is affordable and nutritious and grown without harmful chemicals. The region is full of incredible agroecological farmers, growers and food producers that want to deliver sustainable food for the region to help meet net zero targets, support nature recovery and improve health outcomes.

So, will the politicians running for the role step up and commit to these five key asks if elected? We will keep you posted.

Read the full manifesto here.

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.

Continuing our ‘Learning Through the Land’ series, SFT Content Editor and organic grower, Alicia Miller, considers some inspiring initiatives happening in Wales that are opening doors to better, healthier eating through reconnecting schools and communities with the story behind their food.

As our diets in the UK are increasingly oriented around ultra-processed food, comprising over half of the calories consumed by adults and, more concernedly, over 65% of those consumed by children, there needs to be far more learning and engagement in what constitutes ‘healthy eating’. UPFs have become so dominant in our diets, taking up prime shelf-space and marketing budgets in the supermarkets for food that is inherently addictive. What is needed to counteract this is better education about what’s truly healthy and what’s not.

What can we learn by putting Wales under the spotlight? For several years now, change has been afoot and a range of varied projects across the country have been focused on ‘food education’, helping people – especially young people – to better understand where their food comes from, what the story of that food is and who grows it, opening doors to better, healthier eating. Alongside this, there has also been a push for more small-scale agroecological food production, which could be extended more broadly across Wales – while it’s still early days, there is wide interest in more localised, sustainable food production.

Food Cardiff to Welsh Veg in Schools

The work of Food Sense Wales and also Social Farms and Gardens has been a driving force in Wales from early on, focused on sustainable food production and healthy eating. These organisations’ presence and engagement, which started on a local level with a focus on Cardiff, fed thinking on a national level, with Food Cardiff seeding the wider work that is now beginning to expand across Wales.

Katie Palmer, Programme Manager, had been pushing Government to support a network of food partnerships across Wales to move towards local procurement. These efforts finally reached fruition with a pilot project sending Welsh courgettes into schools in Cardiff over the summer of 2023, as part of ‘Food and Fun’, a summer enrichment programme run in schools. To have opened a very heavy door – ‘local’ procurement is assumed to be almost impossible in schools across Britain – was a coup of sorts and the possibility of it being realised more broadly across Wales, is now closer than ever with the Welsh Veg in Schools project. Katie Palmer comments that “This year is really fundamental to us in terms of starting that process of building a movement [and] the movement is pretty big now.”

There is huge promise in Welsh Veg in Schools – with a focus on fresh organic produce, a big step forward has been taken towards healthy school meals. As Katie noted: “Organic is so central and key to this in terms of demonstrating and improving the benefits – especially in [relation to] biodiversity – of what we’re doing.” There are now seven local authorities participating in Welsh Veg in Schools which is currently focused on primary schools. Ceredigion County Council was coerced into participation by young students questioning why they weren’t getting the lovely carrots produced by the Sustainable Food Trust’s CEO and farmer Patrick Holden – nothing like a bit of agitating for tastier food from the young ones!

And the project continues to expand with a pilot in North Wales currently in development. It seems a sea change isn’t far off.

Small-scale agroecological farming sites with housing

Meanwhile, in Powys, there is also exciting work being done. A partnership, including Powys County Council, the Landworkers’ Alliance, Shared Assets UK, Cultivate (Powys Sustainable Food Partnerships), Lantra and a range of other organisations, are supporting the creation of four ‘micro units’ on a site in Sarn, Powys, under a 90-year lease agreement focused on local, agroecological food production. Powys has been lucky to retain a number of county farms, but farming isn’t a statutory asset in the county, so farms can be sold off when funds are needed.

Each unit is focused on agroecological food production in some capacity. Growers will be able to live on the land in off-grid homes (with generators) and are given access to six to eight acres each, which, crucially, they must farm in a way that benefits nature.

This is part of a bigger ambition that is being coalesced across Wales to have more ‘home-grown’ (so to speak), fruit and vegetable production spread across the country in varied locales, so improving access to healthy fruit and veg. In a country that is largely focused on livestock, it can be easy to forget the importance of local fruit and vegetables; a hundred years ago, almost every farm in Wales would have a patch of fruit and veg and some farmers would also have sales of these, off their land. Lantra has been doing a lot of work with farmers to engage them in growing fruit and veg – something that is also important for broader food security across Wales.

Getting people to eat their fruit and veg

At Bwlchwernen Fawr, where Patrick Holden farms, chefs Barny Haughton and Hazel Thomas, with funding from Ceredigion’s Shared Prosperity Fund, have been bringing farm-to-fork to life in meaningful ways. Across six weeks of sessions, they have worked to engage young people and their families, along with teachers and school cooks, to explore sustainable cooking and eating. This is about cultural change – introducing new foods and new flavours, like the surprising taste of a green bean off the vine.

So much has changed in school cooking, which is now mostly reheating and not cooking; food arrives pre-processed, pre-cooked and generally unpalatable. How do we reshape this into something delicious? For Barny and Hazel a key component is the story of food – there is an appetite, especially from young people, who are perhaps more interested and engaged than their parents, in where food comes from. The setting of the farm creates an essential connection in the farm-to-fork experience. The hope is that everyone who visits comes away with a deeper understanding of the story of their food, particularly the food they ate at the farm on that day.

The conversations at the heart of the sessions are really important and can sometimes be difficult, but this is how to change perceptions and get people to experience different foods which, hopefully, surprise them. That, in the end, is the way forward to healthier eating.

Beacon Farms

The SFT’s Beacon Farms programme is an ambitious project to engage farms across the UK to become literal ‘beacons’ of learning on food education. The farm experience is hugely important in connecting a wide public to the story of their food – whatever that may be. Farm visits and the conversations they generate can be transformative. At Bwlchwernen Fawr, Patrick and Becky Holden have brought diverse groups of people onto the farm to open dialogue across a broad range of topics and utilising the farm experience to enrich understanding of the value of healthy food and sustainable farming. These ‘hands-on’ experiences often resonate deeply through the people who have participated in them.

Food and farming education will continue to be a key component of the Sustainable Food Trust’s work in the coming years, with initiatives like those that have been underway in Wales serving as heartening example of what’s possible when it comes to inspiring people about the story behind what they eat.

Want to find out more about the Beacon Farm project? Click here to visit the project page.

SFT Content Editor, Alicia Miller, provides an overview on this year’s Oxford Real Farming Conference, including one of the SFT’s sessions, Grazing for Good, which took a closer look at the integral relationship between livestock and the biodiversity it supports.

Arriving into 2025 with the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC), it has been hard to ignore what this past year has delivered in terms of climate change – 24 hours of rain in Dubai, a terrifying hurricane season in the US, fatal flooding in Valencia, Spain, heatwaves here, there and everywhere across the globe, and as an intro to the new year, Los Angeles is burning like never before. Twenty-twenty four was the hottest year on record; what will 2025 be?

So, being at the ORFC felt almost blissful – a momentary haven to talk with like-minded people and think about the micro and the macro, how we move forward in a rapidly changing new world and, most pressing, what we can do to fix it, if fixing it is even possible at this point… But hope remains our friend and that’s good to keep in mind.

As always, there was much to explore at the Conference with an array of workshops and ‘deep dive’ sessions arguably dominating the more academic talks on topics like Trauma and the Land and The Interbeing of Agroecology– not to dismiss those deeper discussions which are important to have, but perhaps ‘practice’ is having a moment? What can we do on the ground, in the day-to-day, to make change happen? Are we in a place where action speaks louder than words? That’s definitely food for thought.

In a session on Improving Food Resilience, food policy veteran, Tim Lang, discussed the findings of his recent research for the UK Government, with the panel addressing the critical question: ‘Is the UK’s food system resilient?’ Unsurprisingly, the general consensus was a resounding ‘no.’ The panel explored what resilience truly means in the context of food systems – essentially, the ability to recover from shocks, whether acute (like pandemics) or chronic (such as prolonged political instability) – and how it can be strengthened. The ‘just-in-time’ logistics employed by supermarkets faced criticism, with broad agreement that transitioning to a more localised food system could be vital to ensuring access to healthy and sustainable food in an increasingly uncertain world. Sustain’s Sarah Williams shared insights from the Local Food Plan (which the SFT is involved in), while farmer and GP Tom Pearson emphasised the importance of more farmers engaging with their local communities. The panel agreed that the proof of concept exists, but robust policy frameworks and a stronger economic narrative are needed to turn theory into action.

Following in the vein of Tim Lang’s thinking was a lively panel organised by the Eating Better Alliance. Chaired brilliantly by the organisation’s Sarah Wakefield, the panellists tackled the complex issue of dietary shift and implications for farming – a topic often mired by polarisation, which Eating Better aims to overcome. Holly Purdy’s Exmoor farm exemplifies the concept of ‘better’ meat, with her pasture-fed beef and sheep, and ‘more plants,’ through the introduction of a market garden and silvopasture incorporating fruit trees. Jimmy Woodrow at Pasture for Life highlighted the need to better account for the ecological role of livestock in regenerative food systems, a contribution that isn’t always “captured in spreadsheets,” while Julia Kirby-Smith of Better Food Traders brought in the perspectives of consumers and retailers, emphasising the system’s reliance on cheap food. Could True Cost Accounting provide the solution to rebalancing the system and demonstrate the far-reaching benefits of ‘eating better’? The discussion around barriers ranged from the lack of local abattoirs to the role of the media, and, once again, the panel agreed that getting people – whether school children or MPs – onto farms will be essential to shifting mindsets and driving real long-term change.

Also very interesting and relevant, was a session on pesticide use and its future, organised around organic beef farmer Denise Walton and mixed arable farmer Patrick Barker and how they manage their land. It was an enlightening perspective, especially from Barker, who while working hard to conserve nature on his land (and doing it very well), still uses glyphosate widely. It’s a strange disconnect – for Barker, it’s a tool and he doesn’t worry about it overmuch. But for most, if not all, agroecological farmers at the ORFC, it’s anathema. You can’t do both and his admission is at best problematic.

The Sustainable Food Trust’s session on Grazing for Good? Livestock and Biodiversity in the UK, chaired by SFT CEO Patrick Holden, included the SFT’s Senior Researcher Robert Barbour and Farmer Teleri Fielden, along with Molly Biddell, Head of Natural Capital at the Knepp Estate and Jo Riggall at Plantlife. It was an engaging discussion on the integral relationship between livestock and the biodiversity it supports. Teleri Fielden made a strong case for the role that the mixed flock of cattle that she and her husband graze in Snowdonia National Park are essential in the wider preservation of the nature they support. Practices like rotational grazing and the inclusion of more diverse swards can help to mitigate the overuse of anti-parasitic medication which has significant impact on invertebrates. The reintegration of fertility building leys grazed by animals in crop rotations also offer significant benefits in reducing agri-chemical use. And there are many more sustainable practices that work to support nature and natural habitats in a variety of ways – it is possible to have a food system that works for “people, farm animals and the natural world”. Livestock, as Molly Biddell comments, is “totally critical for the health that their meat provides [and] critical for what they do for the landscape…” The session explored many of the themes that will be covered in the SFT’s next report, due out later this year.

To round off the year, our Executive Director, Adele Jones, casts an eye back over 2024. Adele considers the progress that’s been made towards the food and farming transition over the last 12 months, with a summary of some SFT highlights.

As we approach the end of 2024, I’ve been taking some time to reflect on what has been another busy year for the SFT and a turbulent time for farming.

With the protests in London just a few days behind us and unrest across Europe earlier this year, there is clear disharmony in the farming community at present. As a sector, we have the potential to play a hugely significant role in solving climate change, restoring nature and promoting positive human health and social wellbeing. But with this comes pressure and weighty responsibility. We’re all expecting so much from farmers right now and yet the entire food system as it is currently designed continues to squeeze them, both financially and emotionally.

That’s why, for us, work on financing the agricultural transition remains at the core of our mission. The farming practices that deliver the most value for society must become the most financially viable. We need the government and private sector to work together to introduce a range of carefully tested ‘carrot and stick’ mechanisms that make regenerative farming the no-brainer business model. And to my mind, rather than pitching small farmers against big, we need to think about helping all farmers move in a regenerative direction.

This doesn’t mean to say that small farming businesses won’t need bespoke support in this transition. When it comes to the new farm support schemes, advice, guidance and assistance with data collection requirements will all be key. The same is true further up the supply chain – incentives and regulations must take scale into account to ensure that new rules and requirements don’t discriminate against businesses with fewer resources.

It seems to me that the best way to convince the Treasury to continue to support the food and farming sector constructively in the future, is to supply them with a clear and consistent dashboard that shows where and how taxpayers’ money is being spent on the delivery of public goods. To collect this information, mandatory reporting based on common metrics (integrated into existing schemes and tools so as not to burden farmers with yet another audit) will be crucial. We will continue to develop the Global Farm Metric (GFM) and scale up its usage through tools such as the Soil Association Exchange to help make this possible.

Going into 2025 and beyond, our focus for the GFM will be on its application and how measurement can be used to drive change. We will be using the framework to undertake on-farm true cost accounting studies, considering how common measurement should inform future eco-labelling, and looking at how common metrics can be used to aid the design of sustainable food products through our ongoing collaboration with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s ‘The Big Food Redesign’ project. But, as mentioned above, perhaps the most important use of common metrics is in informing new financing frameworks for regenerative agriculture, and we will be working within the Sustainable Markets Initiative to explore this, starting with a pilot in the east of England early next year.

Of course, all this work will only land if we can inspire and reach business leaders, government officials, school children and the wider public. Our new Beacon Farms Network will be key to this and has kick started our mission to get more people onto farms, providing farmers with the resources and support needed to enable them to host visits that will allow everyone to learn more about the story behind their food.

A few highlights of the SFT’s year:

• January – We gave Oxford Real Farming Conference attendees a taste of our upcoming report on grazing livestock, which will set the record straight on the issues and opportunities around grazing livestock when it comes to climate, biodiversity and human health.
• February – BASIS launched our co-created course on Farm Sustainability and the Global Farm Metric, a first step in our plans to develop educational materials to enhance understanding of the GFM and the importance of valuing and measuring sustainability.
• March – The Telegraph interviewed Patrick about the challenges facing the food and farming industry, following his well-received blog on the farmer protests.

We are delighted to share an update from our Beacon Farms Network, which brings together sustainable farms acting as educational platforms to inform and inspire people about the story behind their food. Our CEO, Patrick Holden, explains the origins of the network and why on-farm ‘seeing is believing’ experiences can be so transformative.

In July 2024, the Sustainable Food Trust hosted an event at Bwlchwernen Fawr marking the launch of a network of Beacon Farms.

The aim of the Beacon Farms initiative is to harness the collective power of farms which combine sustainable farming practice, facilities to host visitors and storytelling skills to enable more people to understand the story behind their food.

The July farm event attracted around 180 participants, including representation from more than 20 farms, mainly from the UK, but also from Ireland and other countries further afield.

The idea of establishing a network of Beacon Farms had been incubating for some time. In 1999, when I was at the Soil Association, we put in a proposal called Millennium Farms to the Millennium Commission, a lottery-sponsored body offering substantial grants for projects that would have a significant and lasting impact after the year 2000.

Our idea was to launch a national network of farms acting as educational stages, offering visitors a chance to learn more about organic food production, using the existing network of certified organic holdings. Our bid was for around £10 million, but it was eclipsed by a bolder and more visionary proposition conceived and subsequently delivered by my now good friend, Sir Tim Smit, for the creation of the Eden Project – which secured £37.5 million.