The loss of access to abattoirs across Australia is presenting a significant challenge for small- and medium-scale livestock farmers, rural economies, and local food systems. Over the past several months, multiple abattoirs have either foreclosed access or ceased operations, leaving farmers with limited processing options and increased costs. The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) conducted a national survey to assess the impact of these closures, collecting responses from 148 farmers across various states.
Key findings from the national survey
- Loss of Processing Infrastructure: Nearly 80% of respondents have lost access to an abattoir or have been informed that they will lose access soon. This impacts not only existing farmers, but is a major barrier to entry for new or young farmers.
- Increased Transportation Costs & Reduced Animal Welfare: Many farmers must now transport livestock over greater distances, with some traveling over 500 km, significantly increasing expenses and animal stress.
- Threatened Viability: The financial burden of higher transportation costs, processing fees, and regulatory barriers threatens the viability of small farms. Many farmers have stopped raising certain animals or have exited farming altogether.
- Diminishing Local Food Systems: The loss of small abattoirs affects not only farmers but also butchers, markets, restaurants, and consumers, reducing access to high-quality, locally-produced meat.
Recommendations
AFSA is calling for urgent action to support small- and medium-scale livestock farmers, rural communities, and local food systems through the following measures:
- Micro-abattoir and mobile processing reform: A comprehensive review of legislation impacting development of micro-abattoirs with a view to developing a fit-for-purpose suite of enabling legislation and policy to enable small-scale, on-farm abattoirs and mobile meat processing.
This should include provision for outdoor slaughter, or ‘field harvest’, as already exists for the hygienic production of game meat, and defining micro-abattoirs as ‘exempt development’ in the rural agricultural zones (aka no advertising, or notice and review period, as specified in various state planning schemes), reflecting the ancillary nature of this use to farming.
- Provision of funding: Farmers are organising, but the success of micro-abattoirs depends on avoidance of debt or extraction of value from lean business models. Governments need to offer matched funding to farmer collectives to construct facilities.
- Learning from other jurisdictions: There is increasing recognition across some jurisdictions of the challenges faced by small-scale livestock farmers, and there is plenty of scope for shared learning on action being taken. In Australia, the Victorian and South Australian governments have enabling legislation. Canada, New Zealand, the EU, the UK and the US all have models that can be instructive for state and national reform.
- National collaboration: Given the resonance between the challenges faced by small-scale farmers across the country, leadership at a national level is required to work with state governments to support constructive joint work in the face of dwindling access to corporate abattoirs.
- Workforce development: Address labour shortages by investing in and increasing the availability and accessibility of training programs and pathways for skilled workers in the meat processing sector, especially in meat safety inspection.
The survey results demonstrate an urgent need for policy intervention to ensure small-scale livestock farmers can continue to operate and contribute to Australia’s food sovereignty. AFSA urges governments at all levels to take immediate action to safeguard the future of local meat production and regional economies.
In requesting information from state meat industry regulators, we discovered a significant gap in data collection, as governments do not know which of the facilities they licence provide service kills. We recommend this data is collected in future.
We don’t need another feasibility study
Many farmers were not aware of any pipeline abattoirs in their area. Others noted there was ‘a lot of talk but little action’ when it came to establishing abattoirs, with feasibility studies not progressing to construction (whether due to lack of feasibility or lack of funds was not stated).
There are many feasibility studies in existence, including (but not limited to):
- Wattle Range Council (SA) Service Kill Abattoir Review by Hood Sweeney (2019)
- Economic Analysis of Meat Processing Options on Kangaroo Island (2019)
- The Feasibility of Establishing Further Meat Processing Capacity In Tasmania (2019)
- Murray Plains Meat Coop Farming Together Feasibility Study (2018)
- Micro-Abattoir for Great Barrier Island, NZ (2017)
- Feasibility of Establishing a Northern Western Australian Beef Abattoir (2010)
| Governments across Australia have regularly provided massive amounts of funding to large-scale developments and upgrades of processing facilities to (ostensibly) increase productivity and employment opportunities in regional areas. To take just one example, in 2016 the Victorian Government provided some $2 million to Hardwicks to upgrade facilities and provide another 170 jobs in the region, followed by nearly another $1 million in 2019 to shift to heat pumps in a bid to help the company reduce emissions. In 2021, Hardwicks sold the company to Kilcoy, the multinational corporation that has recently ceased service kills and left hundreds of farmers with nowhere to process animals, while laying off over 100 staff according to local reports.
If governments can fund big industry, who then sell off Australian assets improved with Australian taxpayer dollars, they can surely provide the much smaller sums needed to fund construction of cooperative micro-abattoirs to ensure food security here in Australia. |
Based on AFSA’s long experience with livestock farmers, and familiarity with government culture of funding and commissioning feasibility studies rather than much-needed infrastructure, we do not support application of funds to more feasibility studies.
We have a crisis of access to slaughter, a population of farmers dependent on processing facilities, and a known market into which they are already selling meat.
What we need are replicable, democratic, robust business models for micro-abattoirs, plus enabling legislation, and funding support to build them.
