Foot And Mouth Ooutbreak: Ministers Should Reconsider Meat Hygene Cuts, UK

Main Category: Water - Air Quality / Agriculture
Also Included In: Veterinary
Article Date: 19 Sep 2007 - 17:00 PDT

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UNISON is calling on ministers to reconsider cuts in light of the latest Foot and Mouth outbreak, as abattoirs face a backlog of work that is being passed on to untrained contractors and slashed workforces.

The Meat Hygiene Service (MHS), which employs meat inspectors, has been carrying out a review of staffing levels of the past year that is now leading to the loss of 130 meat inspection jobs - nearly 10% of the present inspection workforce.

UNISON National Officer for Meat Hygiene Ben Priestley said:

"With a backlog soon to face the abattoirs, and millions of pounds to the industry being lost, now is the time to support our Meat Hygiene Service, not cut it."

Following the August 2007 outbreak, and as the Government lifted livestock travel restrictions, the MHS was left reeling with a huge backlog of work but with a reduced workforce. In some cases lower paid and inexperienced contract inspectors were brought in to replace trained redundant workers.

MHS employers say that some of the redundancies will be replaced with contract inspectors on lower salaries. But UNISON is already raising concerns from member feedback relating to inspection standards, often carried out by new contract inspection agencies.

In July 2007 UNISON also warned the Food Standards Agency, which oversees the MHS, against breaking up the public-run service and contracting out meat inspections to private firms. The FSA agreed not to carry this out for the time being, but the threat remains, as the agency will review this again in May 2008.

UNISON is the UK's largest public sector union and represents more than a thousand MHS workers.

http://www.unison.org