Expert view | A dirty business | Felicity Lawrence
Halting a production line can cost thousands of pounds. It requires no small courage
There can be few employees who relish the prospect of CCTV surveillance of their work every day and yet, tellingly, the proposal to introduce cameras to abattoirs to curb brutality towards animals is not being opposed by the union that represents slaughtermen and meat inspectors.
Meat processing has traditionally been a dirty industry and a culture of macho bullying persists in many parts of it. Often, where malpractice occurs, humans are victims as well as the animals. The attitudes that allow abuse of one species to take root also fail to protect the other. Unison hopes the cameras will expose some of the brutalising treatment its members have to endure too.
The chief executive of the Food Standards Agency, Tim Smith, has frequently spoken about the "disgraceful" intimidation faced by meat inspectors in UK factory abattoirs. He has also forcefully and publicly told the British red meat industry, in which breaches of hygiene and BSE regulations are frequent, that it needs to "clean up its act" generally.
The mistreatment Animal Aid exposed with its undercover filming reflects deeper failings. Abattoirs today are noisy, relentless places in which animals are processed at speed and workers have no control over how fast the carcasses come at them on the production line over the course of long, tiring shifts. Pressure on prices has seen line speeds increased. But maximum economic efficiency for management is often experienced as excessive stress among workers.
Many meat inspectors in UK factories are young female Spanish vets. Halting a production line because you think you have seen something wrong can cost thousands of pounds, as they are frequently reminded. It requires no small courage.
Killing animals day in, day out for hours at a time leaves no room for sentimentality. Many slaughtermen and factory vets I have spoken to over the years are irritated by the hypocrisy of! consume rs who eat meat but prefer not to face the fact that being a carnivore requires someone to kill. Some cope by acquiring a certain gallows humour. Some are inevitably desensitised. But in well-run factories, good training and working conditions that do not push the human links in the chain beyond their comfortable limits ensure that killing is achieved humanely and efficiently.
CCTV alone will not stop abuses, although it may bring more to light. Eliminating mistreatment, and hygiene failures, in meat factories will require systemic change. The best guarantors of animal welfare are humane management and fair economic returns.
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