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From: ...

Originally from: "lina van der wal" <...>
To: <...>
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 8:47 AM
Subject: [farmtalking] Pig ignorant

Christopher Bookers' Notebook
(Filed: 05/10/2003)

Pig ignorant

Zac Goldsmith, the editor of The Ecologist and son of
the late Sir
James
Goldsmith, keeps a herd of pigs on his farm in Devon.
For some years,
whenever
he has wanted to convert one into pork chops for his
family table, he
has called
in a professional slaughterman, one of thousands put
out of work when
John
Selwyn Gummer's bizarre interpretation of an EC meat
directive made it
too
expensive for most of Britain's rural abattoirs to
stay in business.

Recently, however, the farm was visited by an official
of the State
Veterinary
Service who said that, on the advice of Sir John
Krebs's Food Standards
Agency,
this was no longer permitted. According to the FSA,
the slaughterman
was
supplying meat "for sale", which was against European
rules. The only
person who
could be permitted to kill the pigs was the farmer
himself.

Apart from the obvious point that the slaughterman is
not supplying the
meat,
but only his services, it seems that, according to the
FSA's reading of
EC
hygiene rules, it is perfectly all right for an
inexperienced,
untrained farmer
to kill animals for human consumption, but for a
qualified expert to do
the job
is a criminal offence. Mr Goldsmith looks forward to
seeing how Sir
John Krebs
will defend this.

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