Author: Nabanita Sircar
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: May 18, 2003
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5983_255568,00430005.htm
It is a very emotive issue, but
the British government appears set to ban slaughter of animals without
stunning them. This would affect the supply of halal meat. The move has
come as a surprise.
In the last couple of years, authorities
went out of their way to accommodate the demand by the Muslim community
to provide only halal meat for Muslim students in schools and even for
Muslim convicts serving jail sentences.
Under the proposals to be put forward
next month by a government committee Jewish and Muslim communities would
lose the legal right to slaughter animals without stunning them. The communities
have reacted angrily saying that such a ban would end thousands of years
of religious rites.
Under the European Union, animal
welfare regulations, all farm animals must be stunned before slaughter,
unless they are killed by religious methods as halal for Muslims and shechita
for Jews.
Both methods involve religiously
trained slaughter men using sharp knives to cut throats and let the animal
bleed to death.
The Farm Animal Welfare Council,
appointed and funded by the government, has now concluded after a four-year
long study that Jewish and Muslim methods of slaughter are inhumane. The
Council has stressed that they be brought into line with the mainstream
regulations.
But, the discussion between the
Council and religious groups has broken down. The groups have accused the
Council of institutionalised religious prejudice.
Council members, who visited halal
and shechita abattoirs, however, found that the animals took two minutes
to lose consciousness when slaughtered by the traditional method. This
is considered inhumane. But, religious groups say that stunning the animal
amounts to injuring it.
In Britain, 90 per cent of halal
meat is electrically pre-stunned. But many Islamists insist that this is
unacceptable. Jewish laws are said to be even less flexible.
In a compromise move the government,
is likely to tell the two communities to explore ways of finding acceptable
methods of stunning. It would then remove the restrictions.
