Small abattoirs, which have ridden out predictions of widespread closures, may yet be hit by moves to recover a £40M annual subsidy for meat inspection charges.
The British Meat Processors Association (BMPA), which represents many UK killing plants, admitted that losses since January, when costs increased substantially as a result of increased veterinary charges under new meat hygiene regulations, had been less than feared. Only 10 of the UK's 335 red meat premises had closed in nine months, it said.
But according to pressure group the Forum for Private Business (FPB), the real threat was from plans to recover the full cost of meat hygiene controls and handling of specified risk material (SRM) put forward in a consultation by the Food Standards Agency this summer.
The government currently covers 60% of hygiene charges and picks up the full cost of SRM monitoring. The consultation talks of incremental rises from 2007/8, which may cost the industry £1.3M in additional meat hygiene charges alone in the first year.
Bob Salmon, food adviser for the FPB, claimed 60,000 farm and catering businesses depended on low-throughput abattoirs, which could not withstand the increase. "Big abattoirs simply don't want to handle small numbers of animals," he said.
Peter Scott, the director of the BMPA, believed that the FPB was scaremongering. He said the industry was working with the government towards a more cost-effective, self-regulatory system.
"There is no doubt the Meat Hygiene Service (MHS) does need review and is being reviewed. There is no doubt that we need a fresh approach to meat inspection, but that is also in hand," he said.
"There is growing acceptance that the poultry industry has its own inspectors and over a period of time we will move to pigs, then veal, then sheep and finally cattle."
- The BMPA said re-licensing of plants under new meat hygiene rules was proceeding too slowly. By June, it said only 60 out of more than 1,300 abattoirs and cutting plants had been licensed.