Chickpea wrote:you're not allowed to slaughter them yourself,
Poultry, rabbits, pigs, sheep and goats can be slaughtered outwith slaughterhouses by their owner for personal consumption, provided that Article 3 of the "EU COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 93/119/EC of 22 December 1993 on the protection of animals at the time of slaughter or killing" is complied with.
Article 3 states that "Animals shall be spared any avoidable excitement, pain or suffering during movement, lairaging, restraint, stunning, slaughter or killing".
When slaughtering outwith a slaughterhouse, pigs, sheep and goats must be stunned in advance and slaughter must be done by a person with the knowledge and skill to do their job humanely and efficiently.
But, it's even more complicated than that!
If you slaughter sheep, you must remove prescribed material, dye it and dispose of it according to the relevant regulations. As that requires inspection, it effectively means sheep have to be slaughtered in a slaughter house.
Domestic consumption means the owner of the animal only - not members of their family, people visiting them, etc. That's why we get our pigs and sheep slaughtered in a licenced slaughterhouse (and butchered by a licenced butcher, but that's another story).
And if you're a licenced slaughterman, you may only slaughter animals in a licenced slaughterhouse - so you can't kill your own animals for your on consumption if you're a slaughterman.
As for prescribed material, that's also a minefield and open to interpretation by officials. For instance, there are currently no prescribed materials for pigs, so you should be able to get everything back including the blood, all the offal and so on. However, some inspectors say no to everything (including the liver), some allow liver and kidneys, some allow liver, kidneys and heart, and some allow everything. But, if you ask for your pig to be kept whole at the abbatoir and not beheaded and split, then you will get the head, including brains, back and both kidneys (not possibly not the other internal organs or blood).
With sheep, you'd think it it would brain tissue and backbone, but again we've sometimes been denied the liver, heart, lights (lungs) and kidneys because of an inspector's interpretation of the law.
I don't think you're allowed to keep a single pig anymore. I read that it is considered cruelty, and you must keep at least 2 so they don't get lonely. Perhaps they didn't used to get lonely because next door also had a pig in the backyard. But that last might might be bs anyway.
It's not a legal requirement to keep two pigs, but it probably should be a moral requirement. Pigs are very social animals and do much better with another pig for company, especially if their owner is away for much of the day.
I suspect what you're referring to is what Defra calls "environmental enrichment". This means you have to provide pigs with the opportunity to root, investigate, chew and play.
If you want more infro, read the full
pig code.
