This Little Piggie Stayed At Home

A flitch of bacon hanging in the kitchen will do more for domestic harmony than a thousand Methodist tracts and sermons. William Cobbett

Tom Hodgkinson writes: I set up this site in order to draw attention to the confusion around keeping and killing pigs at home. It’s my intention to clarify the law on this matter so people have a clear guide.

Last November, we killed two pigs at home and shared out the meat in our household. But one morning, following my description of the killing in a Sunday Times article, we were visited by a man from the local environmental health department, who told us that we should have had the pigs killed at the slaughterhouse.

We argued that it is more humane to kill them at home: one moment they are happily snuffling, the next they are dead. There are none of the inevitable stresses of the slaughterhouse. No one doubts to that the taste of the meat is better from home-killed pigs.

I was sent a pile of material from the Food Standards Agency, accompanied by a stern letter ticking me off.

However, Three Counties radio contacted DEFRA who say that it is in fact lawful to kill your own pigs at home. You can eat the meat and share it out with your household, but you would not be allowed to sell it on the market.

This is perhaps where the confusion lies, as Food Standards consider giving food to your family to be a version of putting on the market, even though no money changes hands.

If anyone has any experience in this matter and would like to offer their views, please do so via the contact form on this website.

15 Responses to “This Little Piggie Stayed At Home”

michael said:

You can kill a pig at home and eat it. But you should not. This is what the man from the local environmental health department meant.
Nicola said:

You know Michael, it’s not a problem to be able to buy everything you want…pork, lamb, chicken, x-rated toys… the problem is, why I have to pay a lot of money for something I can do better, with more care and in a friendly way? Here, in Italy I don’t want to produce more rubbish, so, like Tom, I rise my chicken, my vegetable, I produce my bread and my soap… zero waste and a lot of fun! Oh! For everybody… I’m not an elderly Hippie gone on dope or a new-ager, till December I was a manager in a big restaurant in the town centre, good smile, good hairdress, manicure and all this stuff… now I’m in vacation.

For the discussion on topics: I don’t really know how it works, here in Italy. I think the same as in England. A neighbor of mine, told me you can kill just one pig a year and not by yourself… the same for chicken, but they close an eyes for that…

Good work!

Nicola (torino, Italy)
Georgina said:

Hi,

I have no pigs but I like wildboars. They are pigs, aren’t they, but I’m not sure how they are killed other than by shooting them. Is there anything against that? I don’t think so. If you go out with your guns and your dogs and shoot things to eat you don’t need to take a slaughterman with you. You just shoot them and eat them. Same with pigs.
Georgie, Hants
Sally Jacob said:

Good to know that Defra are as dumb as ever!! Keep on rearing your pigs & giving them a happy life & “happy” death at home!
If more people reared their own pigs, sheep, chickens… et al, then not only would we have tastier, safer food but happier animals. To say nothing of the pleasure of the taste of said animals.
Rise up & protest about this antiquated, ludicrous petty-foggery to ensure that we can live freely & raise our own livestock freely & slaughter them humanely at home.
I consider the authorities who insist that we all follow the letter of the law to be unworthy of eating great tasting home-reared, home-slaughtered & home-butchered meat.
Let them eat cheap & nast meat from a supermarket & hope they all get tummy bugs, or, at the very least, incredible heartburn & indigestion!!
michele hutchinson-brown said:

Loved your article , having just watch a program on tele Thurs 20 March about Spain and Iberico Ham I went out an bought some the next day NOW THAT IS REAL FOOD. I say lets make it possible for owners, farmers, small holders etc to Kill and Sell there own meat/animals by a registered slaughter man just to keep the diesese thing under control. Thanks Tom love your work

PS says this article appears 23 feb 2007 i read it 23 march 2008.
Valerie Aldred said:

The only way that we can do what you rightly suggest which is to rear and humanely slaughter the animals that we have fed and cared for and given a happy and safe life, is to move abroad. More and more and more of our rights and liberties are daily being withdrawn from us and we all sit back in quiet acceptance. We now live under a near dictatorship dressed up to look like a democracy and the saddest thing is that the other lot don’t promise anything better. Keep on plugging and you may just get there in the end. Good luck!
anonymous said:

I grew up on a livestock farm & have a degree in Agricultural Animal Science. I am no stranger to the small local abbatoirs that used to exist & have also worked on contract to a supermarket in their ‘meat processing’ division - no suprise to hear that this involved a handful of enormous slaughterhouses. Enough on my dreary existence.

I am in favour of home slaughter when the individuals can engineer a humane dispatch. I also feel that more help should have been given to small local abbatoirs to meet the standards imposed by the government. The large units are efficient, but not necessarily better - especially when livestock travel such ridiculous distances.

Responsible local abbatoirs with adequate storage for maturing meats could provide high quality meats to whole communities - not just to those fortunate enough to be able to rear thier own beasties.
Sylvia Lingwood said:

I was in the middle of adding my comments to the campaign when it cleared down, so I’m afraid that you may have an unfinished article. Please let me know if anything reached you? - if not I’ll send again
Many thanks
Ben Moe said:

I think you’ll find (according to the Humayne Killinges Act 1673) that you are allowed to slaughter your own pigs, as long as you only use dynamite to do so.
Nick Doll said:

Food and drink programmes in the UK delight in showing us the practice of French and Spanish farmers slaughtering their pigs on the farm and preparing mouth watering sausages and hams as a result. We should insist on equality of opportunity within the EEC ! Come on Brussels do something worhwhile for a change.
angelo (Italy) said:

I read your site (the idler) today, and I found it interesting and refreshing. Then I stepped by this other site of yours. In Calabria, the Italian region I come from, there still is the habit to breed the pig and then sloughter it at home, although it is forbidden by the low.
Here is a story from the tradition I wanted you to know:
Once upon a time in a farm there was a pig. He lived in the pigpen from where every day he could see and make fun of the donkey who worked hard under its heavy loads: “You see” he used to tell him “you work so hard and I am here, fed and spoiled, doing nothing but enjoying the pleasures of life!”
Finally, one day the donkey stopped by the pigpen and replied: “You know what mate, I don’t think you’re the same of last year’s!”

Thanks for the things you write, I entered your site among my favourite ones.

Ciao, Angelo

PS: The Patron Saint for pigs in Italy is Sant Antonio da Padova and in Calabria all pigs are named Antonio (’Ntò)
alex scrivens said:

You really couldn’t imagine any thing less pastoral.. tall fine chickens running freely on a Welsh hillside farm, a bunkhouse for walkers with their own free range eggs, mountain streams and birch woods… but soil association guidelines for chicken rearing required exorbitant investment and thus prevented him from gaining a valuable organic label…so no market for him at Brecon county market.

Trouble is, food snobs think that organic eggs are in some way better then eggs laid by the bantams out in the back shed…we all know the truth here…only warm eggs with chicken poo on them taste best..especially if they were laid in the back of an old morris minor.

Food snobs…you’re the reason why it’s so crap here.
Roger said:

I am an Environmental Health Officer and my understanding of the law is that it is possible to kill a pig at home provided that only you or your family eat it. As a qualified inspector won’t have looked at the carcass, the meat it is technically classed as “unfit for human consumption” for the purposes of sale. The definition of sale is wider than just the exchange of money, and the definition of family seems to be a bit of a grey area.

The legislation is there to protect the vast majority of the public who buy their meat without knowing anything about where it comes from and I would support this wholeheartedly (the legislation, not the industrialisation of the meat industry!). It should not however criminalize smallholders who wish to take the responsibility of food production into their own hands and I do not believe it was ever intended to do so. This seems to be a good example of conflicting opinion in an area of complex legislation so I will contact DEFRA, LACORS, the FSA and others to try to get some sort of definitive answer for you. If, as I suspect, the answer is that you can kill your own animal subject to a few provisos then I will see if we can put the do and don’t bits into the sort of English that normal people can understand.

Remember it’s always better to ask forgiveness that to seek permission!
P.McArtney said:

Why don’t you leave animals alone and eat Quorn instead ?

I am bloody sick of parasite farmers bellyaching about their supposed dilemma. We subsidise these buggers to the hilt to produce animals whose meat is full of steroids which pass into the human food chain. If they can’t make a profit without sponging off the tax payer it’s time they sold off their farms to property developers. Great Britain has a housing shortage after all. Where’s John Prescott when we need him ? Clout an agri-yob for me Mr P.

Then of course, there’s the fact that animal farming contributes enormously to pollution. Do the decent thing; go vegetarian or vegan.
justin said:

eat Quorn?
as a processed, refined and packaged food, that Quorn is just as, if not more polluting than a small holder’s pig. that pig eats food scraps and grubs and poops good fertilizer. then he or she is slaughtered and butchered at home. how is that polluting?

Have your say