Report / Economic Advisory Council. Committee on Slaughtering of Livestock.

  • Great Britain. Economic Advisory Council. Committee on Slaughtering of Livestock.
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report / Economic Advisory Council. Committee on Slaughtering of Livestock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    58/112 (page 56)
    running the risk of deterioration) may involve some loss. Secondly, attention must be paid to the comparative costs of the construction and maintenance of factories and the provision of lairage accommoda- tion in town and country areas. 147. At present cattle, except those coming to London from Ireland through Birkenhead, and from Scotland through Aberdeen and Inverurie, are generally slaughtered in consuming centres. Having regard to the situation of the midland producing district of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, between the consuming centres cf London, Birmingham and Lancashire and the West Riding, and to the seasonal production of Norfolk, these arrangements are inevitable and, broadly speaking, the present geographical distribution of slaughtering is satisfactory from the economic standpoint. The pro- duction of sheep is concentrated in more remote districts, and the qualification which we made to our general rule in paragraph 144 is therefore of more importance. In fact, considerable killing of sheep does take place in or near the producing area, both in the south-west of England, in the north-west of England and in the south of Scotland. As we have already observed (paragraph 184), a detailed investigation into the most appropriate sites for slaughterhouses in the light of varying local conditions is necessary, and this would be one of the most important functions of the National Slaughterhouses’ Board, the appointment of which we recommend later in this Report (para- graph 177). 148. We propose now to examine the situation which would arise in the important areas which immediately suggest themselves as proper places for the building of regional slaughterhouses. The eleven principal industrial areas in Great Britain have, together with their surrounding districts, a population of 243 millions, or approximately. 55 per cent. of the total population. A further 7} million persons, or 17 per cent. of the total population, live in thirty-one districts, having populations of between just under 100,000 and rather over half a million. The remaining 28 per cent. of the population live in small towns and rural areas. In the following table (Table 15) certain particulars are given of the eleven principal industrial areas, from which it will be observed that centralisation has so far made most progress in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow. London has a low kill in proportion to its size on account of its high consumption of foreign meat, and of the importation of Irish and Scottish animals killed in Birkenhead, Aberdeen and elsewhere.