Animal Aid started to film secretly inside Britain's slaughterhouses in January 2009. To date, we have filmed inside eight randomly chosen slaughterhouses and found evidence of cruelty and lawbreaking in seven of them. The problems are serious and widespread. Our films reveal animals being kicked, slapped, stamped on, and picked up by fleeces and ears and thrown into stunning pens. We recorded animals being improperly stunned and going to the knife while still conscious. Even where no laws were broken, animals still suffered pain and fear. And ‘high welfare' plants, such as those accredited by the Soil Association, were no better than the non-organic ones. Animal Aid believes that whether ‘conventional', organic, kosher or halal, all slaughter is unnecessary and immoral, and the only way to prevent such suffering is to choose meat-free. Campaign Aims We are calling for CCTV to be installed in all UK slaughterhouses and for the footage to be made available to independent parties outside of the slaughterhouse. We also want better independent training, regular retraining and assessment, rigorous enforcement of the laws. We also believe that people with outstanding convictions for violence or animal cruelty working should fail the ‘fit and proper person' test and should not be issued a slaughter licence. Campaign Achievements Our call for CCTV to be installed in all UK slaughterhouses is endorsed by the Chief Executive of the industry's regulator, the Food Standards Agency and by the RSPCA, Compassion in World Farming and the Soil Association. Although the government has been reluctant to encourage slaughterhouses to install CCTV, ten supermarkets – Morrisons, Marks and Spencer, the Co-op, Tesco, Aldi, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Lidl, Asda and the wholesalers Booker – have now agreed to deal only with slaughterhouses that have independently monitored CCTV cameras installed. We still have to convince Iceland supermarkets to insist on the cameras, and we are now working with the supermarket chains towards ensuring that the CCTV footage is monitored properly and that incidents of law-breaking are dealt with effectively. Campaign History The campaign to reveal what takes place behind closed doors in British abattoirs began in January 2009 when we planted fly-on-the-wall cameras in JV Richards, a Cornish slaughterhouse. This was quickly followed by investigations at AC Hopkins in Somerset and Pickstock in Derbyshire. Animal Aid UK
