Mobile Abattoirs Become Legal in Mainland Portugal on 18 October, and the Licence Follows Where the Unit Parks

On 18 October it becomes legal in mainland Portugal to run a slaughterhouse that drives to the animals instead of making the animals travel to it. Decreto-Lei n.º 147/2026, published on 20 July, creates a licensing regime for mobile abattoirs and mobile game-handling establishments, and takes effect 90 days after publication.

The reasoning set out in its preamble is a small portrait of rural Portugal. Agricultural policy has concentrated slaughter capacity near regions of intensive production, and the number of working slaughterhouses in rural areas has fallen steadily. A significant share of small livestock keepers now sits a long way from any approved abattoir, and the cost of transporting animals there can wipe out the margin on production that, in those areas, is a meaningful supplement to household income.

What the law allows

It creates two kinds of mobile unit. A mobile abattoir is a set of removable structures working either as a complete slaughterhouse or as a partial or semi-mobile one, operating in conjunction with one or more permanent slaughter installations that together make up a complete abattoir. A mobile game-handling establishment is a set of removable structures where farmed or wild game carcasses are prepared for human consumption.

The government's case for the second is geographic. Portugal has few approved game-handling establishments and they are not always near the hunting grounds that produce the most meat, so carcasses travel long distances. A mobile unit shortens that journey and keeps the meat in the region where it was shot.

The animal welfare argument runs alongside it: loading, transporting and unloading livestock at a distant abattoir is itself a source of stress, and a unit that comes to the holding removes the journey entirely.

The conditions attached

• The licence follows the parking place. Licensing runs through the Sistema da Indústria Responsável, and the coordinating authority is the CCDR for the area where the unit is parked, not where it works. The pre-operational inspection also takes place at the parking site.
• Units must go home. Operators must keep the equipment at its registered parking place whenever it is not working or in transit between sites, except for repairs, alterations or inspections.
• The killing happens in the unit. Stunning, bleeding, skinning, depilation or plucking, evisceration and inspection must take place inside the mobile abattoir. Carrying them out in the livestock holding's own buildings is not permitted, save in the narrow cases article 7 allows.
• Cutting is limited. Carcasses may be split into halves or quarters, and a half into no more than three large pieces. Anything beyond that belongs in a fixed cutting plant.
• Sanitary slaughter is excluded. Killing on disease-control grounds stays out of the mobile regime altogether.
• Effluent is a licensing matter. Article 11 requires an effluent management system that prevents contamination of surface and groundwater, and the absence of one is an offence in its own right.

Enforcement, and a correction

Breaches are economic administrative offences. DGAV, the food and veterinary authority, or ASAE, the economic and food safety authority, instruct the proceedings depending on the subject matter, and where the body that issued the notice cannot instruct the case, it goes to DGAV. Attempt and negligence are both punishable, and accessory sanctions are available.

One correction has already been issued. Declaração de Retificação n.º 35-A/2026/1, signed on 17 September and published on Friday, rewrites article 6(2)(e) to refer to "the mobile unit" rather than "the mobile abattoir". The rule in question bars a unit from moving to another site, after signs of a transmissible disease appear during game preparation, until its by-product containers are emptied and it has been cleaned and disinfected. As originally published it applied only to abattoirs, which in a paragraph about game preparation made no sense.

The regime applies to mainland Portugal only. The Azores and Madeira governments were consulted, and the draft went through the European technical-regulation notification procedure before adoption.