Losing an animal on a holding around Tarleton starts a compliance clock the moment it is discovered, and Martlands provides licensed fallen stock and ABP collection to the farms, smallholdings and equine yards spread across the village and the mossland around it. Tarleton fallen stock collection is run from our DEFRA approved processing and sampling facility at Burscough, a few miles down the A59, which puts this corner of West Lancashire among the closest ground to the depot anywhere in the area we cover. We are a family-run business, licensed to handle all three animal by-product categories, and a member of the National Fallen Stock Company scheme.
What the Law Expects of a Livestock Keeper in Tarleton
The legal duty sits with the keeper of the animal, not with the collector. Under the Animal By-Products (Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013 you are required to arrange for fallen stock to be collected without undue delay, and in practice that is worked to as collection within twenty-four hours of the death being found. Burying or burning a carcass on your own land has been unlawful in England since 2003, with only a narrow exception for genuinely remote holdings that has never applied anywhere in Lancashire. A farm at Tarleton sits on flat, well-connected ground within easy reach of licensed collection, so the practicality defence that occasionally gets raised on upland holdings is not available here.
What that means day to day is that the decision you have to make is not whether to arrange a collection but how quickly you can get one booked. Our farm and fallen stock collection service runs on the KoLeCt booking system, so the job is logged against your holding number and the paperwork trail begins at the point you call rather than at the point the wagon arrives.
Why the Twenty-Four Hours Matter More Than the Paperwork
The regulation exists because a carcass left in a yard or a field corner becomes a disease and contamination problem quickly, and Tarleton’s geography makes that more pressing than it might appear. This is drained mossland, cut through by a dense network of ditches and pumped drains that feed into the River Douglas and out into the Ribble estuary at Hesketh Bank. Anything leaching from a carcass on that ground is in a watercourse in a short distance, and the estuary is a protected site with a corresponding level of scrutiny. Add the gull and corvid populations that work the estuary and the vegetable ground behind it, and a carcass left out overnight is not a contained problem for long.
There is a neighbour dimension too. Livestock ground around Tarleton is interleaved with intensive salad and vegetable production, and a grower operating to a supermarket assurance standard has a direct commercial interest in what is lying in the field next to their crop. Prompt removal is the simplest way to keep that relationship straightforward.
Cattle Over Forty-Eight Months and TSE Sampling
Fallen cattle over forty-eight months of age must be sampled for transmissible spongiform encephalopathy before disposal, and this is the point at which the choice of collector actually changes the process rather than just the price. Martlands is a DEFRA approved sampling centre, which means the brain stem sample is taken at our own facility as part of the same collection. The carcass does not have to be routed to a third party for testing and then moved again, and you are not left chasing a result through an operator who has subcontracted the work.
The practical instruction for a keeper is straightforward. Do not begin any form of disposal yourself, do not damage the head, and make the age of the animal clear when you book so the collection is planned as a sampling job from the outset. Our guide to BSE testing of fallen cattle sets out what happens to the sample and what the result means for the holding.
Which Animal By-Product Category Your Loss Falls Into
Categorisation is where a lot of otherwise careful holdings get caught out, because it is not uniform across species. Fallen ruminants are handled as Category 1 ABP collection material on specified risk material grounds, which covers cattle, sheep and goats. Losses in other species are categorised according to the animal and the circumstances of death rather than being swept automatically into the highest category. The one rule that overrides species entirely is euthanasia by barbiturate injection, which makes the carcass Category 1 regardless of what the animal was, and that catches out equine yards and smallholdings more often than commercial farms.
You do not need to arrive at the right answer before you call. Tell us what the animal was, roughly how old it was and how it died, and the categorisation is made on our side and recorded on the documentation. What matters is that you do not guess and then find the record contradicts what the collection actually was.
The Documentation an Assessor Will Ask to See
Every collection leaves a commercial document behind, and where waste transfer documentation applies that is issued as well. These are the records a Red Tractor assessor asks for, and they are also what a local authority or DEFRA inspector will want if a holding is ever queried. The document ties a specific carcass on a specific date to a licensed carrier and a licensed destination, which is the whole point of the chain. Our note on commercial documents explained covers what each field on the form is doing and why an incomplete one is worth chasing at the time rather than the week before an inspection.
Our waste carrier licence is CB/QE5406MT, the site licence is EAWML/100236 and the animal by-products licence number is APB/CCN21/373/8002. Those numbers belong on your side of the record as well as ours, and any collector who cannot supply them readily is not one to be using. We are also part of the national fallen stock scheme, and if you are unclear how that sits alongside your own arrangements our explanation of who is NFSCO is the place to start.
Farming Ground Around Tarleton and How Collections Are Planned
Tarleton is not a single farming type, which affects how a collection is scheduled. The mossland to the west and north is dominated by vegetable and salad production, while the livestock ground sits on the slightly higher land running toward Rufford, Croston, Mere Brow and Hesketh Bank, along with the grazing on the marsh edge. Mixed into that are a large number of small equine yards and hobby holdings on paddocks of a few acres, which generate occasional single losses rather than a regular pattern.
The practical difference at the point of collection is access. Mossland tracks and field margins soften badly after sustained rain, and a wagon that cannot reach the animal is a wasted visit for both of us. When you book, say where the animal is lying, whether there is hardstanding within reach and whether you have the means to move it to an accessible point. That one piece of information does more to keep a collection to time than anything else. Holdings further out are covered under our wider Lancashire fallen stock collection coverage, and keepers on the other side of the estuary are served through Preston fallen stock collection.
Arranging a Collection at Tarleton
Book by telephone on 01704 776977 with the species, the approximate age, the holding location and the access position, and the job is scheduled against a licensed vehicle with the correct category handling already determined. Collections can be arranged on an ad-hoc basis or under a standing arrangement, which tends to suit dairy and beef units with a predictable seasonal mortality pattern rather than smallholdings. If you would rather set the arrangement up in writing first, or you want to check what a standing collection would involve for your holding, contact us and we will come back to you with what is required.
