Thursday 8 May 2014

Comprehensive Labelling


Yet again, religious slaughter is in the headlines.

If two chickens reared in exactly the same conditions are both electrocuted until they are unconscious and then one goes into an enormous machine which scalds, feathers and decapitates it, while the other goes to a Muslim who happens to be reciting a prayer, why are critics quite content with the former but up in arms about the latter?

Consumers should be informed whether an animal has been mechanically stunned prior to slaughter and whether it has endured repeat stuns if the first attempt was ineffective.

They should also be told the method of slaughter: captive bolt shooting, gassing, electrocution, drowning, trapping, clubbing or any of the other approved methods.

Comprehensive labelling should be supported by faith communities and animal welfare groups alike.

It would offer all consumers genuine choice, whether they are motivated by animal welfare, religious observance, or even intolerance of anyone who looks or worships differently to them.

Henry Grunwald
Chairman, Shechita UK

Dr Shuja Shafi
Deputy Secretary General, Muslim Council of Britain


Have you ever had an "Indian" that was actually a Punjabi or a Bengali, as in this country they very often are? Have you ever had a Turkish or a Turkish-Cypriot kebab?

Did your head turn into a dome, and your four limbs into minarets?

Ladies, did your faces veil? Gentlemen, did your foreskins drop off?

Well, there you are, then.

Face-covering and the genital mutilation of (as if happens, male) infants are practised in our midst. Yet instead, we are talking about this.

4 comments:

  1. WHAT?

    Only an absolute idiot would compare what the Muslims do to female children with circumcision.

    Genital mutilation refers to the deliberate destruction of a woman's ability to derive any pleasure from sexual intercourse by a mutilation of her body. It is a deliberate and sexist assault on her womanhood.

    Circumcision does not alter-in any way-a man's capacity to have a fulfilling love life.

    It is not remotely comparable, unless you are an unlettered moron.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's absolutely true, and you know it.

    It has been proven that circumcision does not in any way remove from a man's ability to enjoy a pleasurable sex life-it can in fact enhance it by making the skin more sensitive.

    Genital mutilation refers to the deliberate removal of the body part from which a female derives sexual satisfaction-specificall in order to prevent her ever deriving any satisfaction from it.

    It is the sexist dismemberment of children.

    Still too thick to know the difference?

    ReplyDelete
  4. The other issue here is that slaughter, to be halal, should be carried out by a Muslim.

    While halal slaughter was regarded as mostly for the Muslim community, that was reasonable; the proportion of Muslims in the population would drive the proportion of halal meat, and hence the proportion of slaughterers who were Muslim could reasonably be assumed to stay in line with the Muslim population: all quite fair.

    If halal meat becomes more the norm, though,then there is an issue of religious discrimination, with employment in slaughterhouses becoming dependent upon membership of a specific religion.

    Where's the National secular Society when you need them?

    ReplyDelete