To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the use of (a) mobile abattoirs and (b) farmer-assisted slaughter on (i) costs for livestock farmers and (ii) animal stress.

A mobile slaughter facility must be approved on the premises on which it is to operate. Currently there is one mobile abattoir in England and two Food Standards Agency (FSA) approved sites it can operate from. Mobile abattoirs may offer benefits in certain localised or remote settings and in reduced transport times for animals. There are operational and regulatory constraints, and throughput is low and as such their wider application across the industry is limited.

Other than mobile slaughter facilities, the only forms of slaughter allowed on farm are emergency slaughter, which is strictly defined in the legislation, and slaughter by the animal’s owner for their own private domestic consumption. In both circumstances FSA have set out requirements on their website. No recent assessment of costs to farmers has been made for mobile or on farm slaughter.