Interim report / Interdepartmental Committee on Slaughterhouses (England and Wales).

  • Great Britain. Interdepartmental Committee on Slaughterhouses (England and Wales)
Date:
[1954]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Interim report / Interdepartmental Committee on Slaughterhouses (England and Wales). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INTERDEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE ON SLAUGHTERHOUSES (ENGLAND AND WALES) INTERIM REPORT To— MAJOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE GWILYM LLOYD-GEORGE, M.P., Minister of Food. SIR, 1. Following the publication in November, 1953, of the White Paper Command 8989—on the Decontrol of Food and the Marketing of Agricultural Produce you have asked us as a matter of urgency to consider the form which, with due regard to the long-term policy, interim arrangements for slaughtering might take to ensure that meat distribution is satisfactorily carried out when free marketing is resumed next summer. 2. While we were not required under our original terms of reference to base our recommendations on any particular pattern of fatstock or meat marketing to the exclusion of another, it has become clear to us that the method of marketing must have some effect on the ways in which a policy of moderate concentration of slaughterhouses would be carried out. Before your request was made to us we had, therefore, already given some consideration to the question of the method of marketing of fatstock and meat after decontrol and the effect which the necessity for adequate slaughtering capacity immediately following decontrol would be likely to have on the general policy of concentration. | 3. We recognise that facilities which have been found sufficient for the slaughtering of all animals under a system of controlled distribution and under arrangements which enabled the Ministry of Food to plan the whole operation of movement of fatstock, slaughter and disposal of meat and by-products would be quite inadequate under conditions of free marketing. On decontrol the purchase of fatstock will be in private hands and its conversion into meat must conform to the requirements of thousands of individual butchers and to the varying demands of all their individual customers. It is important also to many interests, including the Exchequer, that the marketing of fatstock should not be impeded. Any arrangements that are made immediately to follow the end of control should, however, be such as to facilitate the Government’s policy of moderate concentration of slaughtering. Recom- mendations which we make in.this Interim Report are designed to those ends. 4, Our last five meetings have been confined to the additional problems you have referred to us. It has been necessary for us to have regard to the existing legislation contained in the Food and Drugs Act, 1938 relating to slaughter- houses and the effect that the present control scheme has had on the licensing and use of the pre-war slaughterhouses. We refer to these problems in the following sections of this Report and it will be seen that our recommendations will, if accepted, require amending legislation. A summary of our recom- mendations is in paragraph 75. I. EXISTING LEGISLATION RELATING TO LICENSING OF PRIVATE SLAUGHTERHOUSES 5. The Food and Drugs Act, 1938, which extended and consolidated earlier legislation on slaughterhouses in England and Wales, had as one of its objects the improvement of the general hygienic conditions cf slaughterhouses. It contains provisions in Section 57 which make it an offence for the occupier of a slaughterhouse to use the premises for slaughtering unless he holds a licence granted by the local authority in respect of the premises. Licences are operative for a period of not more than 13 months. Local authorities for this