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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will commission the Foods Standards Agency to undertake a survey on methods of slaughter earlier than 2022 as planned.

Defra has been working with the Food Standards Agency on the design of a slaughter survey to take place in February 2022. The timing of the survey has been carefully selected to represent a typical week for the meat processing industry, avoiding religious festivals, and for consistency with the previous survey.

This timescale also reflects the intention to build bespoke data collection and analysis software to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the survey. It is our plan to collect data on a more regular basis in future and the new software will enable us to do this.