Private Slaughter of Livestock Guidance Notes Northern Ireland
Monday 29 March 2004
The guidance sets out the controls which apply to private kills and maintains the advice in the previous guidance that, except in certain limited circumstances, private on-farm slaughter of animals is illegal.
Private slaughter is the killing of an animal for the personal consumption of the owner. Such slaughter and consumption is often considered to be a human right of the animal's owner, although the lawful options for carrying this out have not always been clear either for the owner or for the enforcement authorities.
It is fundamental to the operation of the Fresh Meat (Hygiene and Inspection) Regulations (NI) 1997 that the slaughter of animals intended for sale for human consumption must take place in a licensed slaughterhouse. Such slaughter would, among other things, be subject to ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection by the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) Veterinary Service. Private slaughter in a licensed slaughterhouse is lawful. It does not necessarily follow, however, that all private slaughter outside a licensed slaughterhouse would be unlawful. That is because the Fresh Meat (Hygiene and Inspection) Regulations (NI) 1997 apply to meat intended for sale for human consumption. Thus private slaughter outside a licensed slaughterhouse would in principle be lawful if it was not intended that a sale of the meat would take place. The purpose of this guidance is therefore to explain what sale means in this context. The guidance also explains how Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) controls affect the lawful options for private slaughter.
Since the Meat (Enhanced Enforcement Powers) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000 came into force on 30th June 2000 district councils have been responsible for enforcing the Fresh Meat (Hygiene and Inspection) Regulations (NI) 1997 outside licensed premises. This means that district councils may, when carrying out inspections outside licensed premises, certify that meat has not been produced in accordance with the Regulations. Such meat would then be treated as failing to comply with food safety requirements under section 9 of the Food Safety (NI) Order. In carrying out this enforcement role, district councils may on occasion need to liaise with DARD Veterinary Service in relation to activities in licensed plants.
