An Auckland couple has driven a “slaughterhouse” on wheels from their neighbourhood after accusing it of turning 25 years of peaceful rural life into scenes of distress and “carnage”.
The mobile abattoir service had last year been killing sheep and cattle at a Dairy Flat property, with the meat sold at The Local Farmer Butchery nearby.
However, that ended when Auckland Council visited the property in October and shut down its operation the next month.
Council inspectors saw blood falling on to the ground and decided the abattoir needed a resource consent to continue commercial operations that discharged contaminants.
Neighbouring home owner Kevin Bell lodged the complaint.
He told the Herald last year that he wanted answers about how a “commercial slaughterhouse” could be set up so close to his Blackbridge Rd home, in view of his lounge window.
He said he didn’t pay council rates on his $1.8 million, 4ha property “to look at an abattoir” and watch “300-plus animals killed 6m outside my boundary each year”.
Speaking this month, Bell didn’t want to comment except to allege the issue had been an environmental breach.
“You can’t let blood run down a hillside without a consent.”
David Taylor, who hired the mobile abattoir to kill his own animals, said his team stopped work at the property next to Bell’s in November.
He had still been able to supply his butchery but said abatement notices issued by council which stopped work had hit him with “unreasonable” costs.
It “put a fierce spanner in the works”, he said.
The spat not only interrupted Taylor’s business, but potentially that of the mobile abattoir run by Logan Wait’s company Earth First, which is understood to be a New Zealand first.
Wait aimed to use it to usher in an era of micro-processing, where animals could be killed in paddocks rather than being transported to big abattoirs.
Taylor, owner of The Local Farmer Butchery, said he began hiring the mobile unit to kill about three to four animals every fortnight on land next to Bell’s that he leased.
He earlier said it allowed him to use a “farm-to-table” model that was a hit with customers and “cut the big boys [supermarkets] out” of the supply chain.
“They’re buying local – they’re buying animals that are farmed just up the road from where they live, which people seem to like,” Taylor said.
He claimed the number of slaughtered animals was more likely to be about 100 annually.
He added that he’d “bent over backwards” to minimise disruption, offering to work with Bell and build an embankment to shield the operation from his view.
However, he said his offer was rebuffed, and he received a text saying: “See you in court.”
Bell told the Herald the operation had been a “disturbing” intrusion on his 4ha property.
He claimed the sounds of rifle shots and generators, combined with the sight of carcasses 150m from his window, destroyed his ”quiet enjoyment" of 25 years.
“My stock walking up and down my land watching their brethren being killed on the other side of the fence isn’t cheering anybody up either.”
The clash came to a head in November when Auckland Council issued abatement notices requiring the operation to cease.
Taylor believed council’s approach was “unreasonable”.
“They told us the whole time they’d work with us to iron out the faults.
“Then at the last minute, they just issued abatement notices and told us to stop completely.”
He was told council required a resource consent that would cost a minimum of $7000 to continue the operation.
That meant a truck designed for micro-processing would require consents for every property it visited - driving prices sky high.
Auckland Council compliance manager Adrian Wilson said his team issued abatement notices to the property owner “requiring them to cease mobile abattoir operations and associated discharge of contaminants”.
A subsequent site visit found these notices had been complied with.
Earth First owner Wait was hopeful the hurdles could be overcome.
He was trying to engage with “senior levels of council” to outline the value of mobile abattoirs.
He believed the operation should be treated the same as other rural services classified as a “permitted activity” under the Auckland Unitary Plan.
Wait’s team had been working with NZ Food Safety with the aim of rolling the model out widely.
His truck had been travelling from Hawke’s Bay to Northland to test the concept, with the Herald reporting in August how it was being used at Kaipara’s Danbri Farm to produce a new premium meat brand.
However, should Auckland Council force the truck to get a resource consent, the ruling could have ramifications even for non-commercial home kill operations up and down the country, he said.
“If council’s coming down on us, then that may in fact threaten home kill [services],” Wait said.
“And of course, that’s a prime source ... for lots of people.”
Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.