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 Kreb's Food Standards Agency, this was no longer permitted. According to the FSA, the slaughterman was supplying the meat "for sale", which was against European rules. The only person who could be permitted to kill 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.
Sunday Telegraph, 5th October, 2003