The whistleblower’s motivation stems from the wider picture, of an industry lobbying for lighter-touch regulation, frequent breaches in standards as well as individual cases of harassment and personal experience.

Stillmans, where he worked, claims to be the UK’s longest established butcher, trading since 1935. It also has a long history as an abattoir. It is well known across the South West, supplying up to 60 butchers and wholesalers, as well as restaurants and catering companies.

The whistleblower said processes he witnessed at the plant meant dirty meat could enter the food chain. After carcasses were stamped with the health mark, they were sent to a designated chiller fridge to be stored before being re-inspected by the OV and transported to customers. Yet he says workers - often "covered with faecal matter and gut contents" - sometimes wandered into this fridge if they needed a pencil or to use the scales, even though they had been told this could re-contaminate the meat.

He added that workers could walk "from the lairage [the area where animals are skinned] into the abattoir, right through the system into the fridges where the meat has been health marked without being questioned. Well, being questioned, but they’d just tell us where to go," he said. The official FSA audit reports for Stillmans show inspectors noted “slaughterman walking from dirty to clean area” in 2015 and flagged this up as a major breach.

The reports highlighted many other examples of poor practice. At least one major breach was found in every audit from 2014 to 2017 and the plant was rated as “improvement necessary”. High levels of faecal contamination were found on pig, sheep and cattle carcasses, to the point that the contamination could be seen by the naked eye. Inspectors also noted carcasses touching the dirty floor, cattle tongues being washed in the same sink that staff used to wash their hands. The area where cattle heads were inspected for diseases had no soap for washing hands.

The whistleblower's key concern at the plant was about dirty carcasses. Stillmans is one of approximately half a dozen abattoirs in the UK which holds a Defra contract to slaughter "reactor" cattle - cows that have tested positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTB), or are suspected of carrying the disease, or have come into direct contact with other infected animals. These cows should be slaughtered separately from other carcasses, with strict hygiene precautions taken to avoid contamination.

Inspectors check them for lesions, which are an indicator of whether the animal has the disease. Depending on the number and location of the lesions the meat can still be sent for human consumption after inspection and processing as there is little or no risk to humans if it is thoroughly cooked.



The whistleblower, however, claims cattle with bTB at times arrived filthy, straight from pasture, with their guts full. This meant that when the animals’ intestines and internal organs were removed during inspection it was difficult not to nick the bowels with a knife and spray gut contents everywhere, contaminating the carcass.

He visited the Devon Country Show this year, and was astonished by how hard farmers worked to groom and prepare their livestock for the event, contrasting with what he had at times seen at the slaughterhouse. “When it’s important for contamination, when they’re going into the food chain, they’re not bothered about them at all. They just come in and they are filthy, they really are," he says. He adds, “if you’ve got animals coming in caked in shit, it doesn’t matter how slow or how good you are, there’s going to be something on that carcass.”



The audit reports also say inspectors witnessed workers washing the anus of a cow while it was being skinned, risking bacteria being spread elsewhere on the carcass. The FSA says if carcasses are visibly contaminated they should be trimmed off with a saw, rather than washed. Yet the whistleblower saw contamination being washed off at Stillmans. “It goes all over and then you get contamination you can’t see,” he said “It is microscopic and suddenly you can’t see it and it’s everywhere”.

An FSA audit report from 2017 says inspectors documented staff washing aprons and knives with a hosepipe, splashing bacteria-filled water next to carcasses. They also noted in the same report some staff weren’t washing their hands, knives or equipment frequently enough.



Inspectors reported particular concerns about the products they found in the chiller fridge for pet food. Bovine stomachs, horse hooves and horse-hide were neither identified nor clearly labelled as animal byproducts and therefore designated as unfit for human consumption. Cattle livers and lungs, skinned lambs’ heads and milk containers filled with blood were stored in the chiller, with no documentation. Staff had no idea where they had come from or to whom they were being sent, inspectors found.

They flagged this as a major issue, explaining that there was a risk that these products might reach the human food chain. Elsewhere, products with a high risk of transmitting disease to humans, such as a cow’s spinal cord or carcasses from a diseased animal, were not stained with dye, in a breach of regulation. (Staining marks these high risk products indelibly, so they are not accidentally sent for human consumption.)

One knife steriliser was not turned on, while very dirty knives were found in another. Sterilisers were found to be below the correct temperature, running the risk the knives were not being sterilised at all. The slaughterhouse itself was found to be dirty; inspectors found substances, including pig hair, blood, fat and mould on fridge walls, railings and hooks used to hang meat.

In a June statement Stillmans said the allegations were "ancient history" and maintained there was "no scientific evidence that washing has any adverse effect on disease organisms[…]". This contradicts what the FSA told the Bureau in a statement. It said: "washing of carcasses must not be done to remove visible contamination as this may have the effect of dispersing the contamination to other parts of the carcass."

The Stillmans statement continued: "Any insinuation that the hygienic quality of our meat is in any way inferior to that from any other abattoir is unsubstantiated and untrue."

It continued: "An FSA veterinary surgeon is present in our plant at all times during operations and the suggestion that any meat which was in any way unfit might leave the plant is not only ridiculous but offensive to the FSA."

It added its "own tests" indicate "freedom from disease causing organisms."

The Bureau contacted Stillmans again in September regarding the whistleblower’s allegations but the abattoir declined to send a response.