Business at Sussex's last abattoir has more than tripled in a year

Downland Traditional Meats, which the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership^1,2,3 describes as the last remaining abattoir in Sussex, worked with 2,000 businesses in the three months to April 2026. In the same three months a year earlier, it worked with just under 600.

The figures come from an update the partnership published on 15 September, 18 months after its Local Meat Report. That report, written by its Land Use Plus team and released in April 2025, set out why small abattoirs matter to the farmers who graze the South Downs.

Grazing livestock help maintain the Downs’ chalk grassland, which the partnership calls among the most species-rich habitats in the world. The UK has lost 97% of its grasslands since the Second World War, and 80% of its chalk grasslands, according to the partnership.

Several regional abattoirs have closed in recent years. Farmers with smaller herds of native breeds have had to send animals further away, often without getting the carcasses back to sell themselves. Most large abattoirs do not offer a “kill and return” service, and without one, the partnership says, farmers can struggle to sell their meat directly to the public.

“This explosion in demand shows how the lack of provision of abattoirs in the Southeast of England continues to be a serious issue,” the partnership wrote.

Horsham District Council has won funding for improvements at the Downland Traditional Meats site, where the work is still very manual. That work has not started yet. It has been held up by delays, including issues with quotes and with drainage, which the landlord has still to fix.

The partnership is working with Wealden Food Partnership, local councils and others through the Southeast Abattoir Working Group. It is asking people to write to their MP about why small abattoirs matter to them.

For shoppers, the partnership runs Sussex Grazed, a meat box scheme selling meat from grass-fed and wild animals raised by graziers and deer managers who manage land across Sussex for habitat recovery. It also keeps a list of local butchers and farms. Saddlescombe Farm, in the South Downs National Park, sells through Sussex Grazed, and Bulstrode farm in Ovingdean sells beef direct.

The first of the partnership’s tips for buying meat is a short one: “Eat less but better”.