Speaking at an April 20 conference of the Scottish Association of Meat Wholesalers, its president, Neil Stoddart, called for a "de-commissioning scheme" of slaughterhouses to bring their number in line with beef and lamb supplies. There are currently 26 slaughterhouses and 6,700 workers employed in meat processing plants in Scotland.

At the same time that jobs of workers are being threatened, livestock farmers are also being shown the stick by the meat company bosses. Speaking at a meeting of farmers in Aberdeen last month, Donald Brown, a representative of the feed manufacturer Keenan's, said Scottish beef farmers "have to ask if they can really call themselves quality meat producers." Brown claimed 55 percent of the farmers' livestock fails to meet the industry specifications.

Behind these moves has been a decline of meat processing over the last year, in part due to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom during which some 6 million animals were destroyed and exports halted.

Two years ago slaughterhouses processed 2.16 million cattle in the United Kingdom, of which half a million were in Scotland. This year the total is estimated to fall to 1.9 million with 405,000 in Scotland. An even sharper decline has hit lamb. Two years ago the lamb kill for the United Kingdom was 16 million, with 1.9 million in Scotland. This year it is expected the UK kill for lambs will be 12.7 million with 1.6 million in Scotland. The number of pigs slaughtered in Scotland rose slightly to 800,000 over this time, but fell from 12.4 million to 10.6 million in the United Kingdom.

The decline in the total number of animals slaughtered has been impacted by a growing rivalry and competition among the capitalist rulers in various European countries. In France, which in the past has been a major importer of UK beef and lamb, the rulers are using the foot-and-mouth disease and also BSE (mad cow disease) infection of the herds to both maintain a ban on beef from the UK and place prohibitive restrictions on lamb imports. Imports of red meat into the UK are rising, with pork imports up 50 percent over 1999. This sharpening competition has hit farmers particularly hard. For example, pigs are currently selling at 90p (1p=1.5 cents) a kilo, 10p less than the break-even point for the farmers.

The National Farmers Union Scotland (NFUS) has joined with the meatpacking companies and the Scottish executive, the government in Scotland, in responding to these moves by putting fuel on the protectionist fire. One step is a drive to reclassify what can be labeled Scottish beef. Currently if an animal has been in Scotland for 90 days it can be classified as Scotch, thus receiving a higher premium price than beef produced in the rest of the UK.

The NFUS proposal would restrict this designation to only animals born, reared, and slaughtered in Scotland. A May 10 opinion column in the Inverurie Herald endorsed this course, arguing, "Throwing our lot in with England, where the quality of beef generally leaves much to be desired, is not the way forward."

The growing mountain of regulations promoted by different capitalist rulers, using the excuse of foot-and-mouth and BSE, is affecting working people as well. For example, new regulations have come into force prohibiting "private" slaughtering facilities. These have been widely used by small tenant farmers, called crofters, in the outlying Western Isles of Scotland. The March 2002 closure of a slaughterhouse in Stornoway has added to the problems facing the crofters.

Donald Manford of the Scottish Crofting Foundation said of the move: "Will this mean they [crofters] cannot slaughter animals unless they start transporting them to licensed abattoirs? These rules are in danger of making criminals of honest men and women."

Workers in the industry have been hit hard by layoffs. At McIntosh of Dyce, in Aberdeen, 100 out of a total workforce of 300 have been laid off since February. Sepps Gourmet Foods, the owners of the factory, which produces sausages and pies, blamed their drop in profits on the fallout from foot-and-mouth disease. In Newbridge, Edinburgh, Grampian Country Foods announced May 8 it will close its chicken processing plant, where 547 people work, and transfer production to other plants in Scotland. The company hopes to turn the factory site into a business park.  
 
 
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