Draft Mandatory Use Of Closed Circuit Television In Slaughterhouses (England) Regulations 2018

George Eustice Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 General Committees

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Mandatory Use of Closed Circuit Television in Slaughterhouses (England) Regulations 2018.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I am delighted to introduce these important regulations, which meet the Government’s manifesto commitment to make CCTV recording in slaughterhouses mandatory in England. Our manifesto commitment reflected widespread public concern about animal welfare in slaughterhouses. The regulations are made under powers in section 12 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006.

At the outset, I would like to emphasise that although certain provisions of the regulations—which require operators to install a CCTV system—come into force on 4 May, the regulations are drafted so that there is a transition period of six months before the offences and enforcement provisions come into force. That means that slaughterhouses have until 5 November to install a suitable CCTV system and become compliant with the regulations.

The Government have encouraged the voluntary uptake of CCTV in slaughterhouses for several years, but recently the number of slaughterhouses installing CCTV has stalled. In 2016, only 50% of red meat slaughterhouses and 70% of white meat slaughterhouses had some level of CCTV for animal welfare purposes, which is a similar level to the 2013 Food Standards Agency survey.

Slaughterhouses that had installed CCTV had not always done so in a comprehensive manner. In 2016, only 46% of slaughterhouses with CCTV had coverage in the unloading area. The level of CCTV coverage was even lower in the stun area, with less than 40% of slaughterhouses having CCTV in that area or in the bleed area. Even in slaughterhouses where CCTV is installed, key areas are not always covered by cameras.

In February 2015, the Farm Animal Welfare Committee—FAWC—produced an independent assessment of the benefits of CCTV in slaughterhouses. It identified that CCTV offers real benefits as an important and complementary aid to the official inspection of slaughterhouse practices and as an evidential method of recording animal welfare abuses.

FAWC also identified significant benefits of CCTV systems to slaughterhouse operators, from in-house review of their operations and effective staff training to providing evidence of due diligence. That can increase public confidence in the meat industry and its adherence to the UK’s high animal welfare standards.

FAWC’s report provided a useful basis for the Government’s proposals on mandatory CCTV that we published last summer. We received nearly 4,000 responses to that public consultation, with more than 99% in favour of mandatory CCTV recording in all slaughterhouses.

The regulations will require all slaughterhouse operators to install and operate a CCTV system that provides a clear and complete picture of areas where live animals are present. That will include areas where animals are unloaded, lairaged, handled, restrained, stunned and killed. We expect CCTV installations and their use to be proportionate to the size of premises and their throughput.

An official veterinarian is still required in every slaughterhouse when in operation. Slaughterhouse operators will be required to provide access to CCTV recordings for the FSA’s official veterinarian and other authorised inspectors. Access to CCTV recordings for monitoring, verification and enforcement purposes is essential, and will be especially useful where the official veterinarian undertakes other duties in the slaughterhouse and does not directly witness all incidents.

We expect OVs to carry out a timely review of CCTV to address any immediate welfare incidents, and to take advisory or enforcement action. None the less, the slaughterhouse operator will need to retain recorded images and information for 90 days. That is in line with the requirements of some farm assurance schemes, and was the duration we arrived at following our consultation.

Although CCTV will not replace, reduce or be considered a substitute for current inspection and controls of slaughterhouse practices by official veterinarians, access to CCTV recordings will provide more opportunities to assess compliance with animal welfare requirements on a proactive and reactive basis.

I turn now to why we are applying this to all slaughterhouses. We believe that the requirements for mandatory CCTV recording should be applied to all approved slaughterhouses, regardless of size, on the basis that all animals should be offered the same level of protection at the time of killing. Some 95% of our meat is killed in abattoirs that already have CCTV in some form, because the larger abattoirs tend to have CCTV. The regulations ensure that all slaughterhouses of whatever size must now have CCTV at all stages of the process. Slaughterhouses that supply the main supermarkets already have CCTV, but we want to ensure there is comprehensive coverage.

We are conscious that some of the businesses affected by this legislation are small, so we thought it appropriate in these regulations to allow six months for businesses to become compliant. In view of the considerable gains to animal welfare and the many other benefits identified, particularly for the slaughterhouse operator, the Government consider that the benefits justify the costs involved and do not deem direct financial support to the sector for CCTV to be something that should be borne by the taxpayer, although grant funding is available to slaughterhouses under a number of schemes.

The regulations will introduce mandatory CCTV recording in all 270 slaughterhouses in England, as an additional monitoring and enforcement measure to ensure that animals are spared avoidable pain, distress or suffering during the slaughter process. They form part of an important package of reforms that the Government are delivering to improve animal welfare, such as the new system of local authority licensing of activities involving animals and the publication of updated animal welfare codes of practice. The regulations are proportionate and targeted, and will help to improve animal welfare at slaughter.

In conclusion, the regulations have been widely welcomed by many organisations, such as the British Veterinary Association, and will greatly assist the Food Standards Agency, which has been most supportive of the Government’s proposals. I also appreciate that this issue has received support from many Members from all parties in the House. For those reasons, I commend the regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

I shall try to cover as many points as possible. I am grateful for the support of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stroud, on the regulations. There has truly been cross-party support on this issue for a number of years. I want to address some of the legitimate concerns that he raised, on which I think I shall be able to give him the reassurance he wants.

First, we are absolutely clear that the introduction of CCTV in slaughterhouses is not a replacement for the current inspection regime. It does not mean we are going to change the requirement for full-time official veterinarians on hand in the abattoirs. We are not planning to change any of the existing requirements. The CCTV is in addition to, rather than a replacement for, OVs and other inspections.

The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of cost. Like him, I would not want to damage some of the smaller abattoirs, whose existence means animals do not have to travel so far. If we close down more abattoirs, more animals will have to travel further. However, the cost is quite modest: the cost of CCTV systems has been coming down a lot in recent years. We estimate that the average cost for most smaller abattoirs will be in the region of £2,500. As I said in my opening remarks, we do not envisage paying the cost directly, because it is fairly modest even for small abattoirs.

The other thing to notice is that, as the report by FAWC identified, there are commercial benefits for food business operators in having CCTV in place, because it can help them to manage their lairage facilities. For instance, in its report FAWC highlighted the fact that it is easier to spot lameness or other problems in sheep with CCTV than when someone comes and perhaps spooks the animals. We believe there are advantages and cost savings to small businesses from putting in CCTV.

The hon. Gentleman highlighted the work that organisations such as Animal Aid have done. I agree with him. In fact, one thing that a couple of years ago made me determined to make changes was that I frankly did not think it was good enough that we seemed all too often to have to rely on activists making surreptitious recordings. After the event we would inspect and carry out enforcement on the basis of the footage that had been surreptitiously collected. That is not the right way to run things. If it is the case that some of our official veterinarians were unable to spot bad practice and malpractice in those abattoirs, it is right that we make it a legal requirement to have CCTV in slaughterhouses.

The hon. Gentleman asked why we believe it is necessary to require this of all abattoirs, given that, as I said in my opening remarks, some 95% of animals are currently slaughtered in abattoirs that have CCTV. For me, there are a couple of reasons why we need to do that. First, some of the problems we have experienced are in those smaller or medium-sized abattoirs that do not always have CCTV in place. Secondly, the larger abattoirs tend to have it, but even in the larger abattoirs we have seen problems. The hon. Member for Bristol East raised a couple of cases where enforcements were brought; in those cases, sometimes there was CCTV in place but they were not adequately monitoring it or recording all areas, so even with CCTV they were not picking up those problems. Therefore, having legal clarity about CCTV covering all areas where there are live animals is the right approach to take.

The hon. Member for Stroud highlighted the fact that, of all the responses, only a small number were from the industry. To be fair to the industry, as he pointed out, we have lost a lot of abattoirs, so they are small in number, and we had thousands of responses to the consultation because it is an issue the public care about deeply. My conversations with the industry and representative bodies on this issue have shown that their view has broadly come round to the idea. Rather than have voluntary codes and chivvy people to join such schemes and voluntarily adopt CCTV, the industry has increasingly got to the point where it would rather have a level playing field and, if we want to bring in regulations, have them applied across the board so that everybody is treated the same. It is fair to say that the industry recognises that there could be some value in this and that there is an advantage in having a level playing field.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the difference between abattoirs and slaughterhouses. I was not aware of that distinction, but I will check. However, I am reliably informed by my officials that in law, commercial slaughterhouses and abattoirs are interchangeable terms. In most of the EU regulations that I see, the term slaughterhouse tends to be used, and in some of the older domestic legislation the term abattoir is sometimes used, but these regulations apply to all commercial slaughterhouses or abattoirs.

The hon. Gentleman asked where cameras will be placed. We have deliberately kept that open, for the important reason that a small abattoir, killing a small number of animals, might be able to cover all areas where there are live animals with just a couple of cameras. A larger abattoir, slaughtering thousands and thousands of animals per day, may need multiple cameras to ensure it is covering all areas. We are clear that it will need to cover all areas, including unloading areas, areas where there is lairage, areas where stunning takes place and the bleed areas. Right up until the point that the animal is dead, there must be a clear CCTV recording.

The hon. Gentleman asked who will decide where the cameras should be placed. The FSA is currently working with the Department to put together guidance on that. Ultimately, the Food Standards Agency and the official veterinarians employed by the FSA in each abattoir will be the final adjudicators on where cameras should go. We envisage it being a discussion with the food business operator, which will need to satisfy the local FSA inspector that the areas where it plans to locate cameras are adequate to satisfy the legislation.

[Dr Drew]

The Minister has visited slaughterhouses, as I have, so he knows it is not an easy job. If there is a dispute, will the final say-so be with the FSA or DEFRA?

[George Eustice]

We have designed it in such a way that we will trust the FSA official veterinarian to make that final judgment call and to ensure that the abattoirs that they are responsible for inspecting comply with the legislation. Will I potentially end up with letters from people complaining? Quite possibly. Will I have to get involved? Quite likely. But the intention is that the FSA OVs will lead on that.

The hon. Gentleman asked who would be responsible for inspecting the recordings. Again, that will be the official veterinarians. He referred to local authorities, but it is important to recognise that the FSA is responsible for food safety policy and, in abattoirs, also responsible for enforcing animal welfare policy, although it is not responsible for animal welfare policy. So DEFRA is responsible for animal welfare policy, but the FSA is responsible for implementing in the abattoirs the policy that we set for it.

The hon. Gentleman asked about public access. We do not intend there to be public access to the recordings. I shall explain why. The Farm Animal Welfare Committee looked at the issue in depth and made a very sensible point: used properly, CCTV in slaughterhouses can be an important aid to food business operators. He made the point that a job in an abattoir is not an easy one, and sometimes things go wrong. Most of the time when things go wrong, it is not deliberate—sometimes errors are made. The argument made by FAWC therefore is that we need to create a space where those recordings can be used to help educate and train staff and to pull people up where mistakes might have been made. It might not always be appropriate for that to be publicly available or for there to be a prosecution in every instance.

The hon. Gentleman asked about religious slaughter and slaughterhouses engaged in that. I confirm that yes, the requirements in the draft regulations will apply to religious slaughter, just as they will to any slaughterhouse. There is no exemption for religious slaughter when it comes to the requirement to have CCTV. That is important to enforce existing provisions in national legislation on things such as standstill times and the additional requirements for animals slaughtered in accordance with religious requirements.

The hon. Member for Stroud also asked who will enforce the provision that recordings be kept for 90 days. Again, we will expect that of the official veterinarians. They are full time in the slaughterhouses, and we believe that they can enforce that provision because if they are there every day, they would have a pretty good idea if recordings started to go missing or there were any type of fraud.

The hon. Gentleman asked finally about CCTV after slaughter, but the purpose of the draft regulations is narrow: to protect animal welfare. He is right that there have been some instances in the news recently of wider problems and other types of food fraud being committed, but we have introduced these regulations to protect animal welfare.

I now turn briefly to some of the points made by the hon. Member for Bristol East. She talked about her concern that things were not always followed up and that there is not always enforcement. I would say, however, that just because decisions are made not to withdraw an operator’s licence, that does not mean that action has not been taken. Indeed, the WATOK regulations, which govern the welfare of animals at the time of killing, create the powers—though we had similar provisions under the Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations 1995—to issue stop notices, for example, so an OV can stop a line or any production until something is sorted out. We also take regular action to reduce or remove the licences of individual slaughtermen, where there has been abuse, although we might stop short of reducing or removing the operator’s licence. Other facilities such as improvement notices and so on are also included under the WATOK regulations. Lots can be done short of closing a facility down, which is obviously a severe sanction that we rightly reserve for those activities with which we have the greatest problem.

The hon. Lady mentioned the development in the United States of—as she put it—high-speed slaughter. We have a very different animal welfare culture in the UK from the US, and we have been absolutely clear that we will not reduce our animal welfare standards—far from it; indeed, we would like to enhance them. We are working with a number of organisations on issues such as improving the slaughter of pigs, in particular the gas mixture used, and we have no intention of taking the US route.

On EU nationals, finally, the hon. Lady is right: we have a lot of EU nationals in our slaughterhouses. The Prime Minister has been very clear that we will protect the rights of those who are here and, as a number of hon. Members will know, the Migration Advisory Committee is looking closely at our labour needs after we leave the EU.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Mandatory Use of Closed Circuit Television in Slaughterhouses (England) Regulations 2018.