Submitted to the Honourable Tara Moriarty, NSW Minister for Agriculture, on 15 May 2026. More information on AFSA’s National Abattoir Campaign.
We are writing to raise concerns about serious challenges facing small-scale farmers in NSW and highlight how you can help.
Smallholders are the bedrock of local food production across our state, providing Australians with visibility into the food they eat, how it is produced, and accountability for its production. A thriving small-scale sector also contributes to agritourism, agri-education, industry diversity, and resilience. Increasing volatility in global markets and the impact of distant wars on long supply chains highlight the need for robust local food systems.
A 2025 AFSA survey found 80% of smallholders have lost or are at risk of losing abattoir access*; 2026 data confirms this trend**. Despite demand, small-scale farming in NSW risks disappearing, squeezed by dwindling abattoir access and complex regulations.
Victoria recently eased planning rules for micro-abattoirs, leading to new facilities and a flourishing of several more under development. NSW farmers still face planning hurdles that waste time and money as abattoir access dwindles.
Documented losses from late 2024 onwards are particularly significant***, presenting an existential but not inevitable threat. In the absence of obligations on abattoirs to provide timely and affordable access to small-scale farmers – there is scope for the government to progress low-cost, common-sense options to enable farmers to continue to provide healthy, sustainable, local food.
Previous NSW Government responses to AFSA’s representations indicate that regulatory arrangements designed for industrial meat processing do not need to be adjusted for the micro-abattoir context. However, this ‘do-nothing’ position turns a blind eye to the categorically different risk profiles of the industrial and small-scale sectors, applying a standard out of reach for small-scale farmers, unsupported by evidence. For example, a farmer processing a small number of animals on their own land generates organic waste at volumes the land can readily absorb – composted or buried, it becomes fertiliser, closing the loop in exactly the way good environmental practice should encourage. The land-to-waste ratio is different; proximity to waterways and neighbours is a farm-specific rather than an industrial risk; and the farmer has a direct, enduring interest in maintaining the health of their own land. Bespoke regulation, scaled to actual processing volumes and land area, would better serve both producers and environmental outcomes, rather than imposing industrial compliance costs on a situation that bears no resemblance to the problem the regulation was designed to solve.
Food safety remains essential, but farmers lack access to required meat inspection training. The proposals below offer a way forward.
- Classify micro-abattoirs as ancillary use in rural zones and allow Exempt or Complying Development on RU1 and RU2 zones, following Victoria’s lead. This builds on previous NSW proposals to ease low-impact agricultural development.
- Apply ‘field harvest’ standards for on-farm slaughter, chilling, inspection, and transfer to licensed facilities, as in the game industry and on Lord Howe Island. This approach offers animal welfare benefits.
- This practical solution has already proven successful in domestic and export markets.
- Higher food safety standards can be applied to domestic livestock, mitigating perceived risk.
- This approach also improves animal welfare by reducing transport.
- Ensure small-scale farmers can access Meat Inspector Training.
- Farmers need a qualifi ed meat inspector to run micro-abattoirs. While training is subsidised, it is only offered through industrial abattoir traineeships, excluding independent operators.
- Nationally, meat inspector training options include:
AMP30322 Certifi cate III in Meat Safety Inspection: 100 hours post-mortem inspections (plus additional for more species) and 10 ante-mortem per species.
AMPMSY414 for micro processing: Only 10 ante-mortem and 10 post-mortem inspections per species, under supervision. Not eligible for export premises.
NSW Government should subsidise AMPMSY414 for micro-abattoirs, allowing completion outside industrial abattoirs.
- Update Primary Production for Land Tax to include value-adding and income diversification, protecting small producers from industrial tax and supporting agritourism and direct sales.
These proposals align with changes overseas including in Canada (2021) granting small-scale facilities exemptions from scale-inappropriate planning controls and regulations designed for more complex supply chains. Our counterparts in New Zealand are supported by a Risk Management Template for Micro-Abattoirs that process fewer than 20 large animals or 50 small animals per day. Both the UK and the US have introduced funding support for small-scale meat processing facilities.
The NSW Government has a role to play to ensure all scales of livestock farmers are protected from the consolidation of abattoirs and other food processing infrastructure, and farmers are not the only ones impacted. Independent butchers are also struggling to survive, as abattoirs refuse to sell whole carcasses in favour of making more profit by selling boxed meat. As has already occurred internationally, we are at risk of losing the craft of whole-carcass butchery and knowledgeable, skilled butchers to service communities across NSW. The status quo protects the interests of an increasingly consolidated, vertically integrated industrial meat processing sector – at the expense of small-scale farmers, independent butchers and NSW consumers. This worsening trend is fundamentally not to the long-term benefit of the health and well-being of NSW people or the economy.
Urgent action is needed before small-scale livestock farms go the way dairy has since deregulation and industry consolidation, which has resulted in 80% foreign ownership of dairy processing facilities, and the loss of 67% of dairy farms.
Thank you for taking the time to read this briefing on the crisis befalling small- and medium-scale livestock farming. We hope it sparks action on these or other ideas you may have to support small-scale farmers, both from a basic commercial fairness perspective and from an understanding of our value within the agricultural and food sector and rural and regional economies.
We would welcome the opportunity to meet and discuss these proposals further.
Sincerely,
Dr Tammi Jonas, Focal Point for Farmers
Glen Chapman, NSW Farmer Liaison
Susan Wardell-Giles, NSW Farmer Liaison
* AFSA National Abattoir Campaign
**Nous Group Report – Fragility to Resilience: Local meat processing in Australia at a crossroads
***Cowra Meat Processors cancelled service kills (Sept 2024); Booyong ceased service kills for non-QA certified producers (Jan 2025); Canowindra Tableland Premier Meats announced closure (Dec 2024).
