Time To Insist That Our Parliamentarians Outlaw This Outrage

    You might think that the law about cruelty to animals excluded religions because these are really intelligent, sophisticated, all-round nice people who don’t need to be told to treat animals with respect.

This turns out not to be the case.

Muslims and Jews have been given the right to treat animals cruelly when they kill them for human consumption.  I’m not sure when this law was drawn up, but what kind of politicians would think that an exclusion of the need to treat animals with respect made sense? Is there any other area of the law where politicians think it is a good idea that unacceptable behaviour can be enshrined into law because a particular group of bearded, medieval, dunderheads cling to some nonsensical theories?

Don’t these politicians realise that they are in parliament to speak for us? What ever made them think that it made sense to abrogate the nation’s desire to treat animals with respect? What kind of coward would not have the guts to say to representatives of an alien culture, that they must respect what Britons demand?

Perhaps politicians thought that hallal killing wasn’t worth making an issue of because it was such a minority activity, it didn’t matter if a small number of animals died in agony. Remember, this method insists that animals are not stunned, but have their throats slit, so the blood drains from their bodies. Death takes a long time. It is obviously painful, cruel and unnecessary. The animals must of course be facing Mecca while this happens. I’m not sure if Jews insist that dying animals face in a particular direction. This is justified because some medieval thinkers, before science was invented, thought blood was somehow dangerous for humans in animal meat. It has clearly outlived its usefulness.

This issue has become hot again because it seems that some food producers, in the interests of saving money, instead of producing hallal food for Muslims and regular stuff for the rest of us, are making it all hallal. This saves them money. According to the Sun newspaper, caterers are secretly dishing up halal meat to thousands in hotels, restaurants, schools, top hospitals such as Guy’s – and at sports venues Ascot, Wembley and Twickenham.

You would think that this would inspire two reactions. Firstly, the British people would insist that this is stopped, forthwith. And secondly, that religions loose their special dispensation to kill animals using methods which are an affront to British values.

You would also think that British Muslims and Jews would also say that, “sorry, we realise that hallal killing is a barbaric method of killing animals for human consumption. It is no longer justified on health and scientific grounds. We realise that this might have made sense in the dim and distant past, but not any more. We understand that as citizens of Britain it is intolerable to try and maintain outdated ideas, which offend the sensibilities of our fellow citizens, and forthwith we declare this hallal activity at an end.” Some hopes.

Given that this seems unlikely, I shall be asking my MP, Nick Herbert, what he plans to do to end this outrageous cruelty.