Send cattle to slaughter
What you need to do when you send cattle, bison or buffalo to a slaughterhouse.
Applies to England and Wales
Before you send animals to slaughter at a licensed slaughterhouse, you must make sure that each animal:
- is correctly tagged with a primary and secondary tag
- has the correct cattle passport
Without these, an animal may be rejected by the slaughterhouse.
You cannot send animals to slaughterhouse if they:
- have been refused a passport
- were born before 1996
These animals cannot enter the food chain. Read the guidance on cattle without passports.
You also cannot send animals to slaughter if you have movement restrictions on your herd. For example, because bovine tuberculosis (TB) has been found in your herd.
What you need to record and report
When you send animals to slaughter you must:
- update your holding register within 36 hours
- report the movement off your holding to the British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) within 3 days
You must carry out these actions so that cattle can be traced. This is a legal requirement to prevent and control the outbreak of disease.
If you fail to do this, you could have movement restrictions placed on your herd, get reduced subsidy payments or be prosecuted.
A slaughterhouse may report the off movements on your behalf. But as the keeper, you’re still responsible for making sure BCMS has received the information within the deadlines for movement reporting.
Last updated 8 November 2022 + show all updates
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Updated to include information about when you cannot send cattle to slaughter, the legal requirement to carry out cattle tracing tasks and the consequences for not completing the tasks.
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This guidance has been updated to show it no longer applies to Scotland.
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First published.