Abattoir provision and opportunities for mobile slaughterhouses in Scotland by the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission

3. SAWC Evidence gathering and analysis

In preparing this report SAWC met with a number of stakeholders (see Annex 1 for full list) to gather verbal evidence on perceived issues with slaughter provision in Scotland. Stakeholders were selected to achieve a variety of views from across the industry. As part of the verbal evidence gathering SAWC visited Munro’s of Dingwall in November 2024, where we observed routine slaughter, primary and secondary production and spoke with the managing director.

In addition to verbal evidence, SAWC also considered published reports already in the public domain, as well as commissioning a report on Scottish livestock movement data from EPIC Scotland: Centre of Expertise on Animal Disease Outbreaks (see Appendix I for full report) and requesting information on issued Certificates of Competence (CoCs) from Food Standards Scotland (FSS) (CoCs are required by those working in an abattoir in order to be eligible to perform certain operations with live animals). See Appendix II for full data set.

Throughout the evidence gathering process, SAWC focused on five key questions in relation to animal welfare:

• What type and length of journey are Scottish livestock undertaking on their way to the abattoir?
• What are farmers’/producers’ perspectives on the current slaughter provision in Scotland?
• What are the meat industry perspectives on the current slaughter provision in Scotland?
• What are the slaughter provisions and associated welfare impacts of high-risk animal groups reared in Scotland? (e.g. end-of-lay hens)
• Would the use of Mobile Slaughter Units (MSUs) be viable and do you think they would improve animal welfare?