Farmer fined over cruel and illegal pig slaughters

Warning - this piece contains images that some readers may find distressing.

A farmer who illegally slaughtered pigs has been fined £1,500 and handed a suspended prison sentence.

Leicestershire County Council said it prosecuted Robert Emerson after an off-duty police officer drove past a farm at Leire, near Broughton Astley, on 11 December 2021.

Initially suspecting he had stumbled across a cannabis farm, he reported it to colleagues, who found pigs being killed illegally for Christmas orders.

About 130 pigs were seized.

Men had gathered at the farm to buy pigs to be slaughtered for Christmas

The county council said the pigs were being sold live for £170 each, before being illegally slaughtered on the premises.

Four recently-slaughtered pigs were found lying on the farmyard, and another had been loaded into the back of a car, the authority added.

The council's animal welfare officers found conditions at the site were unfit for the animals, so they were moved to a safe place before the authority applied to the courts for the pigs to be "formally given over to trading standards for disposal".

Emerson, 73, of Orchard Road in Broughton Astley, pleaded guilty to two charges under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 when he appeared at Leicester Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.

Reputation 'in tatters'

He was given a five-month sentence, suspended for 12 months, and has also been banned from keeping animals for 10 years.

Defending Emerson, Stephen Cadwaladr said his client had come under pressure from a group of men to sell them pigs "for supply to the food chain".

District Judge Jonathan Straw accepted evidence Emerson was "a broken man", suffering from ill health and whose reputation as a respected breeder was now "in tatters".

"All of those rosettes, trophies, accolades and titles all earned over time by your efforts and industry are now overshadowed," he said.

"Partly through pressure and partly through greed, you were treating the animals that you once held so dearly in such a cruel and abandoning fashion."

Emerson pleaded guilty to an Animal Welfare Act 2006 offence of permitting others to engage in cruelty on the premises - namely the slaughter of the pigs and related operations such as tying up the animals with no water and no dry lying area prior to killing.

He also pleaded guilty to single offence under the same act which related to the generation of viscera at the scene.

Officers found dead pigs on the floor and others being held on site