Two men face Chester court over abattoir charges
TWO Whitchurch men will enter pleas after being charged with illegally using a cattle prod against animals at a Chester abattoir when they return to court in November.
Matthew Arden, 32 and of Fields View, Burleydam and 48-year-old Paul May, of Belton Road, in Whitchurch, appeared at Chester Magistrates Court on Friday, September 2 charged with a number of counts of harming the animals in their care. Neither have yet entered pleas.
It is alleged that both men, working at the G & G B Hewitt Abattoir site in Huxley, Chester, applied an electric goad, otherwise known as a cattle prod, to bovine animals at the site, plus other ill-treatment of the animals.
Arden is charged with five counts, all taking place on February 9, 2021, including contravention of EU regulations relating to pain, three charges of failing to comply with slaughterhouse rules and failing to ensure proper use of guiding instrument on animal at a slaughterhouse.
May is charged with three of the same counts, plus failure to move an animal with care on April 21, 2021.
It is alleged the two men, who are part of a wider prosecution, “failed to ensure that an instrument intended for guiding an animal was used solely for that purpose” and “only for short periods on individual animals in that you repeatedly applied an electric goad to the hindquarters, back and other areas of a bovine animal”
By Barrie White / Whitchurch Herald
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