My Lords, I lend my support to Amendment 87. I declare my interest as an honorary associate of the British Veterinary Association.
In the 1980s, we had an extensive network of small, family-run, easily accessible abattoirs, then along came an innocuous draft EU directive on slaughterhouses. As an MEP, I took soundings from many in rural communities. We worked very closely with what was then MAFF. Off his own bat, after years of waiting, and in a classic example of gold-plating, an official in MAFF took the opportunity to drive a coach and horses through the abattoir network and close many of the well-functioning, perfectly safe, smaller abattoirs serving the rural communities.
That brought devastating results in the early 1990s and again in the early 2000s, when we experienced BSE and foot and mouth disease. As the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said in moving this amendment, that led to longer journeys for livestock being taken to abattoirs, and potentially the spread of those diseases at that time. The noble Lord quite rightly identified this problem, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, has just said, there are now parts of Scotland, particularly the islands, without abattoirs and completely dependent on mobile abattoirs. That raises costs to the producer, which goes to the heart of the viability of livestock production in the rural areas of the Highlands and Islands and, as the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said, raises serious animal welfare concerns.
We must revert to a better and more extensive network, as we enjoyed before. This network of smaller, family-friendly, easily accessible slaughterhouses should be put in place and Amendment 87 provides the means to do so.