Karlsruhe (dpa / lsw) - Animal rights activists and organic farmers want it, the Ministry of Agriculture wants it and the drum is also being beaten at the federal level: For the welfare of the animals, it should be possible in the future to slaughter them more often at the farm of origin instead of killing them alive and scared to death to cart to the slaughterhouse. It's called mobile slaughter and there are now more than 30 facilities in the southwest that the authorities have approved for this. In 2020 it was just one. 50 cattle farmers and one pig farmer now have permission for mobile slaughtering on their farm.
Their number is growing, says a spokeswoman for the State Farmers' Association in Stuttgart. However, mobile slaughtering devices are still a niche from the association's point of view. It is too complex, tedious and also too slow to slaughter animals in this way.
Ernst Hermann Maier is considered a pioneer of mobile slaughtering: a farmer from the Zollernalb district who, against much resistance, developed a mobile slaughter box in the 90s to kill his animals on the pasture and then transport them away for cutting.
There are now numerous initiatives, projects or manufacturers nationwide that are constructing mobile slaughterhouses. This is usually a trailer or a slaughter box made of metal, into which the animal, which has previously been stunned by a bolt or bullet at its farm of origin, is pulled into it and bled within a very short time.
The initiative "Butchering with caution" in the district of Lörrach took years before their mobile slaughtering unit MSE was approved. In the meantime it has gone into series production; ten of the systems have been sold.
