Today (29th July), a short item with video was posted on telegraph.co.uk titled ‘Secret footage shows pigs abused at abattoir’.
‘… The undercover video was allegedly recorded over a period of four days at Elmkirk Ltd (Cheale Meats), a family-run slaughterhouse that claims to maintain high standards of animal welfare.
The animals in the video are beaten with a bat, punched in the head and burnt by cigarettes. One injured pig is forced to crawl into the stun pen, finally being kicked and dragged in by its ears.
Animal Aid, which shot the footage, claims the abuse is widespread and has identified legal breaches in a further seven slaughterhouses, which it has secretly filmed over the last two-and-a-half-years.
Such treatment is against the law in the UK but the government has so far decided not to prosecute Cheale Meats as the footage was obtained illegally.
The Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) has issued the following statement after the footage was made public: “Defra takes the issue of animal welfare very seriously. Where video evidence has been obtained unlawfully through trespass, there is very little prospect of securing a conviction …’
Read the item in full and be the first to add your comment online at www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/batteryfarming/8670309/Secret-footage-shows-pigs-abused-at-abattoir.html
[Animal Aid released the footage yesterday (28th July, reported on this web-site). Cheale Meats are based in Essex; in February 2001, the first evidence of the national foot and mouth disease outbreak was discovered there.]
Posted on July 26, 2011
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