Slaughterhouses: Animal Welfare
(asked on 29th January 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many reports of mis-stunning before slaughter he has received for each category of animal in each year since 2008.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) can provide recorded data from 2010 onwards detailing the number of instances of inaccurate/ineffective stunning which have occurred in the main categories of animals, in FSA approved slaughter premises in England and Wales. Each instance relates to an event that has been categorised as a serious or critical non-compliance on the welfare reporting systems used at that time. These figures do not reflect the number of animals involved.
Number of inaccurate/ineffective stuns recorded as serious/critical in England and Wales 2010-19
Year | Period | Poultry | Cattle | Pigs | Sheep and Goats | Total |
2010 | April 2010 to March 2011 | 17 | 9 | 4 | 9 | 39 |
2011 | April 2011 to March 2012 | 6 | 10 | 3 | 4 | 23 |
2012 | April 2012 to March 2013 | 9 | 8 | 2 | 6 | 25 |
2013 | April 2013 to March 2014 | 6 | 13 | 3 | 2 | 24 |
2014 | April 2014 to March 2015 | 11 | 21 | 3 | 3 | 38 |
2015 | April 2015 to March 2016 | 4 | 81 | 0 | 3 | 88 |
2016 | April 2016 to March 2017 | 2 | 27 | 0 | 1 | 30 |
2017 | April 2017 to March 2018 | 4 | 15 | 1 | 10 | 30 |
2018 | April 2018 to March 2019 | 2 | 34 | 4 | 6 | 46 |
2019 | April 2019 to December 2019 | 0 | 14 | 1 | 6 | 21 |
Grand Total | 61 | 232 | 21 | 50 | 364 | |
The figures in the table above for poultry only reflect the data associated with electrical stunning methods as the predominant method used in larger poultry premises is controlled atmosphere stunning (gas) method which is designed to kill rather than stun.