§ Mr. GillTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the average cost of meat inspection per animal in(a) large, (b) medium sized and (c) small abattoirs. [68129]
§ Mr. RookerThe Meat Hygiene Service (MHS) charges for meat inspection and hygiene supervision are calculated on a "per hour" basis. As a consequence the MHS does not routinely calculate throughput based charges for individual abattoirs. The Agency did, however, carry out a one-off exercise to calculate unit costs for 1996–97. This exercise illustrated the difficulties in the calculation of unit costs. The MHS had reservations about whether the data accurately reflected the actual unit costs of any particular plant. This was due to a number of factors including the difficulty of gathering all relevant data for the exercise and the assumption made during the calculations.
In addition, there are several reasons why unit costs may vary from plant to plant, notably differences in structure, differences in efficiency or operation and the application of the MHS charging policy at each premises, for example whether travel time is incurred. The data produced from the exercise are therefore open to wide interpretation and unsuitable for publication.