The president-elect of the British Veterinary Association, John Blackwell, has reignited the debate over the banning of religious methods of animal slaughter by calling for greater discussion of the outlawing of slaughter without stunning. Arguing that he doesn't "think an outright ban is a long way off", Blackwell stressed that his organisation's stance "is not an attack on religious faith, it is a view that we have taken on animal welfare", and appealed to Jewish and Muslim groups to work with the authorities in order to find a compromise.
The debate over ritual slaughter in the UK is one that hits the headlines periodically, often in the wake of decisions by other countries to prohibit the practice. Denmark introduced a ban on slaughter without stunning last month, joining Norway, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland on the list of European countries to have acted on the issue. There is also a ban in place in New Zealand.
It is a debate that brings out strong views on both sides, pitting religious communities against the animal rights lobby. It is also an issue on which the British Humanist Association and the National Secular Society both hold firm positions. Responding to John Blackwell's comments today, Pavan Dhaliwal, the BHA's Head of Public Affairs, said "it is vital that the law covering the welfare of animals at the time of slaughter is humane", and noted that "exemptions afforded to religious groups to allow for slaughter of animals without pre-stunning undoubtedly contradict that principle".
When confronting the issue of ritual slaughter, there is an appeal in adopting a purely evidence-based approach. Do the Jewish shechita and Muslim dhabiha methods of slaughter, particularly when they do not involve pre-stunning, cause greater suffering than standard methods of slaughter? If they do, ritual slaughter should be banned, but if they don't it should be allowed to continue. While religious groups take issue with arguments that ritual slaughter causes greater suffering, scientific evidence, including that presented by the Farm Animal Welfare Council, suggests that it does involve more pain for the animal than standard methods of slaughter.
However, as attractive as this straightforward evidence-based approach may be, it must be recognised that it is impossible to divorce the ritual slaughter debate from its cultural and historical context. Like it or not, this is not a debate that will ever be purely about animal rights. For some secularists, ritual slaughter is a particularly egregious example of religious privilege at work – a practice that would otherwise be banned is allowed simply on account of religious rights. For Muslims and Jews, calls for a ban can look like a direct attack on those rights, and concern about animal welfare can appear disingenuous.
The majority of those expressing concern about religious slaughter are not right-wing extremists, but they are part of the same debate as the English Defence League members who have been known to wave placards outside branches of fast food restaurants that serve halal meat. For Muslims and Jews, campaigns against religious slaughter are not easily separated from concerns over Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
Take the example of Denmark – while the government has insisted that the decision was taken on the grounds of animal rights, Jews and Muslims have protested that the ban amounts to an attack on their religions. If it is true to say, as the government argued, that no slaughter without stunning had taken place in Denmark in the last decade, why has the Danish state made what essentially amounts to a symbolic gesture? For the Israeli Deputy Minister of Religious Services, Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan, the Danish ban is evidence that "anti-Semitism is showing its true colours across Europe, and is even intensifying in the government institutions". This may sound extreme, but such reactions to bans on ritual slaughter have to be understood in their historical context – while the fact that the Nazis did it can not stand as a debate-ending argument, it is important to recognise that a ban on the shechita method of slaughter formed a part of the incremental attack on the rights of Jews living in the Third Reich in the 1930s.
It's clear, then, that any debate around religious slaughter cannot be restricted to questions of animal welfare. If those arguing for a ban in the UK would like to advance their cause, they may need to meet their opponents halfway. The British government has indicated in the past that it does not intend to consider prohibition, and debates in other European countries demonstrate the divisive impact of moves to implement such bans. The answer, therefore, may lie in continued discussion over the way in which religious slaughter is conducted, in order to ensure that suffering is effectively minimised. Is it possible, for example, to extend the use of stunning prior to slaughter? This could prove negotiable with reference to halal, as not all dhabiha slaughter in the UK is conducted without stunning, but compromise could prove trickier with reference to shechita, which prohibits the use of stunning.
While expressing their concerns about ritual slaughter, perhaps opponents also need to ask themselves why they are choosing to focus on that particular issue. How about all the other issues relating to food and animal welfare in Britain? Unless your own approach as a consumer is exemplary, it could be argued that you're on shaky ground pointing fingers at Muslims and Jews for consuming halal and kosher meat. Vegans may have a case, but, personally, until I'm investigating the sources of all the meat, eggs and dairy I buy, and looking the other way when tempted by a fast food restaurant late on a Friday or Saturday night, I'd feel somewhat hypocritical arguing for a ban on the ritual slaughter of animals.
Ultimately, many of us have a complicated and conflicted relationship with the food industry. It's an issue we need to be debating on an ethical and political level, and we should certainly be placing animal welfare at the centre of the decisions we make about food. Ritual slaughter needs to play a part in this debate, but focusing on it at the expense of a host of other issues is surely an unhelpful and divisive distraction.
