Abattoir visit - Hawke's Bay

The scale and efficiency of this abattoir was very impressive, slaughtering 12,000 a day. 10 per minute. They have 2 lines and each line slaughters 4,000 in the morning shift and then the evening shift starts at 4pm through to 11.30 when only 1 line runs. This is only a lamb and mutton abattoir and sometimes veal. It was interesting to compare this abattoir with the one I visited in Australia. I felt this one in NZ is more similar to the UK than the Australian abattoir. The security was very strict and they required identification of who I am and what I do before they would show me around. No dogs are allowed in the lairage, lambs can arrive anything up to an hour before they are slaughtered, especially at the moment when they are short of lambs. Due to it being a good growing season and plenty of grass around many farmers are holding on to the lambs to get them heavier. The animals are all slaughtered according to Halal with a lot of meat being exported to the Middle East. 90% of the meet is exported to many countries around the world. There was very little wastage. Some livers are condemned due to facial eczema, liver fluke or c. tenicolis. These are all sent to be made into dog food. Most carcass weights were between 16.5kg-19.5kg at this abattoir today. There were some 22kg but these were over fat and the farmer is penalised for this, unlike in Australia. Some carcasses are exported whole, however the majority go to the boning room. As the carcasses go into the boning room they go through a X-ray machine that calculates where to cut them into the three sections to get the best value for the carcass. The yield of each third is fed back to the farmer. This allowes the farmer to see what area he needs to focus his breeding on.