THE government has been urged to implement fully measures to save small and medium-sized abattoirs.
Concerned that many rural abattoirs have closed, the Country Land and Business Association, along with 21 other organisations, including RSPCA, RSPB, Soil Association and Rare Breeds Survival Trust, says the latest proposals from the Food Standards Agency could have the opposite effect to that intended by the government.
In a letter to the Food Standards Association chairman, Sir John Krebs, the 22 organisations say that draft statutory proposals produced by his agency do not go far enough.
The letter, which has also gone to the Agriculture Minister, Mr Nick Brown; the Health Minister, Mr Alan Milburn, and the Countryside Agency head, Mr Ewen Cameron, says: "Rather than reducing the burden of charges borne by small and medium-sized abattoirs, the proposals may give licence for inspection charges to be increased.
"The government will have wasted its money if, as a result of additional charges envisaged in the statutory instrument, abattoirs continue to close, with all the devastating downstream consequences for the rural economy and the environment that it sought to prevent."
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