Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many animals were (a) slaughtered for food consumption and (b) then tested for the presence of lead in (i) 2019, (ii) 2020, (iii) 2021, (iv) 2022, (v) 2023 and (vi) 2024.

A summary of the number of animals slaughtered for food consumption and number of animals tested for lead can be found in the table on the following page.

For information, the majority of these data are available through the Defra Food and Farming statistics and the VMD also publishes the results of annual residues monitoring on an annual basis on GOV.UK.