THE Prime Minister has defended traditional religious methods of
slaughtering animals for meat, pledging that "on my watch, Shechita
[the Jewish method] is safe in the United Kingdom".
In an address at the Knesset yesterday, Mr Cameron
stressed that, as a backbencher, he had fought against the last
attempt to challenge the practice, "and there is no way
I'm allowing that to change now I'm Prime Minister".
In his first visit to Israel as Prime Minister, Mr Cameron
said: "The Jewish community has been an absolute exemplar in
integrating into British life in every way. But integration doesn't
mean that you have to give up things that you hold very dear in
your religion."
Last week, the president-elect of the British Veterinary
Association (BVA), John Blackwell, said that if Muslims and
Jews refuse to allow animals to be stunned before they are
killed, the Government should ban their traditional methods of
slaughter.
Mr Blackwell, a farm vet, said that the Danish government's
recent ban on halal and kosher slaughtering (News,
7 March;
Letters, 7 March) was done "purely for animal welfare reasons,
which is right. We may have to go down that route."
In an interview with The Times, Mr Blackwell expressed
his hope that Jews and Muslims would accept that animals should be
stunned unconscious before they were killed: "It would be more
productive if we can have a meeting of minds, rather than to say,
'You can't do it.' [Otherwise] a ban may be the only way to move
the issue forward."
Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the Board of Deputies of
British Jews, debated the issue with Mr Blackwell on the
Today programme on Radio 4 on Thursday of last week.
"Animals that are killed for the general market and the Jewish
and Muslim markets are killed in exactly the same way," he said. "A
large animal has its throat cut, and that renders the animal
insensible to pain and unconscious. The Jewish method is designed
to bring that process about instantly . . . [it] focuses on the
most humane way of bringing an animal's death about."
He suggested that Denmark was a "very poor and unhelpful
example. . . What you had was a political act designed for populist
reasons because of prejudice against Muslims."
Evidence on slaughter and pain is disputed. A statement issued
by the BVA, the Humane Slaughter Association, and the RSPCA states:
"Scientific evidence demonstrates that slaughter without
pre-stunning compromises animal welfare," and cites a 2009 New
Zealand study. It recommends that, if the Government does not
insist on pre-slaughter stunning, is should at least label food to
enable consumers to make informed choices.
In a
joint article for The Guardian published last
Friday, Mr Akrush and the deputy secretary general of the Muslim
Council of Britain, Dr Shuja Shafi, argued: "There is ample
scientific evidence that religious slaughter is at least as humane
as conventional mechanical slaughter."
Letter