News emerged this week of a desperate plan being concocted by the UK meat industry to address its labour crisis by employing prisoners via work release schemes. They say it’s the result of the combined effect of Brexit and Covid, but all it confirms is that only people with no other options would choose to butcher animals.

Thanks to Brexit and other moves to limit immigration, slaughterhouses and meat processing plants can no longer exploit workers from the EU and, unsurprisingly, there just aren’t enough UK nationals willing to cut up dead animals for minimum wage when they have other options.

Step in the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS), which reportedly set up a meeting with the UK Ministry of Justice yesterday to figure out how its members can better exploit another section of society with options that they hope are as limited as those of EU immigrants: prison inmates and ex-offenders.

It’s no secret that the meat industry has relied on workers from the EU, knowing that they’ll work for less money and in terrible conditions because they can’t find work elsewhere. In June, the meat sector was already warning of production shortages as EU workers returned to their home countries and chose to stay there. At the time, Richard Griffiths, chief executive of the British Poultry Council (BPC), told the BBC:

"We generally operate in areas of high local employment so there is a limit to availability of UK workers and there is negligible appetite from UK workers to move from other parts of the country.

"When it comes to non-UK labour - either from the EU or further afield - we have seen reducing numbers willing to come to the UK, the immigration barriers of salary and skill have been raised way beyond what we can manage, and the cost of bringing people is prohibitive."

Now AIMS wants to target prisoners and ex-offenders through existing schemes such as the Release On Temporary Licence (ROTL) programme, and is looking to fill around 14,000 job vacancies - approximately 15 per cent of the industry’s workforce according to the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA).

Schemes like ROTL are supposed to equip current and former prisoners with new skills and guaranteed work placements, and this is exactly how AIMS is selling the idea. Bernard Matthews for example has already established links with HMP Norwich, luring in cheap labour with the promise of contracts and ‘job ready’ transferable skills.

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Association spokesperson Tony Goodger - who approached HMP Hollesley Bay in Suffolk last week only to be told that its inmates were already employed elsewhere - claimed that prisoners would be taught food safety skills that would help them find work in the industry, suggesting that they take advantage of free training from the Food Standards Authority.

However, it’s hard to imagine how transferable such skills would be. Slaughtering animals and then cutting up their body parts represents something of a niche skillset that would be applicable in no other workplace, except behind the meat counter of a supermarket. Even local butchers are dwindling, reducing the options for ex-prisoners further.

The plan at first glance appears to be in the interest of prisoners, giving them new skills and a fresh start following their rehabilitation. But in truth, it’s just another example of the meat industry exploiting a vulnerable section of society rather than raise wages or pay for machinery to automate production.

The industry is desperate and has said as much. Even former armed service personnel have reportedly been approached to fill the worker shortfall, but uptake has been low. 

The BMPA said that its members were "trying absolutely every avenue" to find people willing to work in facilities that processed dead animals. Is it any wonder when slaughterhouses are so dangerous and the conditions so terrible? During lockdown, many plants were closed down due to high rates of Covid-19 infections resulting from the cramped conditions, while incidents of work-related accidents caused by sharp knives and repetitive injuries have always been high.

Prisoners should have access to work placement schemes. They should be taught skills and have options once they’re released. As a modern and progressive society, we have a duty to look after those who have undergone rehabilitation. But allowing an unsustainable industry that already causes so much harm to the environment and public health, increases the emergence of pandemics and does terrible things to non-human animals as countless investigations have revealed, to lure in people with relatively few options is tantamount to manipulation and abuse.

The human rights implications are profound when considering the high occurrences of PTSD and other mental health conditions amongst slaughterhouse workers. Studies also show that rates of domestic violence are higher in areas where there are slaughterhouses, raising the question of whether such work leads to violent tendencies as a result of stress and the psychological trauma of witnessing death on such a scale or attracts those with existing violent tendencies.

For all these reasons, the UK government must refuse to help the meat industry reach out to prisoners. Instead, the UK should create other options in far less harmful employment. The plant-based food sector is growing massively, particularly alternative proteins, and training in sustainable farming and food production would give ex-prisoners true career opportunities as the world changes rapidly and wakes up to the grim reality of animal agriculture.

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.

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