MP joins mobile slaughtermen's fight

The ruling has halted the mobile slaughtermen's work

The government is being asked to overturn a ban on mobile slaughtermen imposed by the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

St Ives Lib Dem MP Andrew George has pledged to ask Agriculture Minister Margaret Beckett to review the law, adopted in the 1990s.

The FSA said there is less risk to public health if animals are destroyed in abattoirs instead of by slaughtermen travelling from farm to farm.

But the slaughtermen have established a fighting fund to back their campaign and are hopeful the minister will help.

It is quick, clean and efficient and it's finished before they even know it

Marjorie Leigh

"An important point to be made to government ministers is that we are taking these issues too far and traditions are coming to an end," said Mr George.

"I'm sure the Government doesn't want to be tarred with the brush of taking the nanny state too far and I will certainly be taking up these issues."

Paul Marshall, a mobile slaughterman from Wadebridge, said there is no threat to food safety from his work.

"I can't believe the farmer is allowed to slaughter the animal himself with no experience and I've got 30 years experience and I'm not allowed to slaughter and butcher an animal for him."

He has been a slaughterman all his working life and is now unemployed.

"I feel very unhappy about having to sign on for Jobseekers allowance," he said.

Marjorie Leigh, a smallholder from St Breward on Bodmin Moor, is upset her sheep can no longer be slaughtered on her land.

Complex issue

She said: "If they are actually killed on the premises they do not have to be transported to the abattoir.

"It is quick, clean and efficient and it's finished before they even know it."

But Paul Cooper from the National Farmers' Union (NFU) warned that the issue was complex.

He said: "The NFU has looked at this legal definition and the difficulty comes over what is a local slaughter and what is not."