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Stop this ritual slaughter
By Brian Sewell, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 17.06.03
The slaughter of farm animals was a subject to which my mind was closed until 1975. With relish I had eaten veal in Italy and wondered at the mysteries of bollito misto, the great stew. In Belgium nothing had been more sumptuous than half a calf 's head in a Brussels brasserie, tête de veau complete with ear, eye and half muzzle, the cheek, the tongue and brain fine fare for the unthinking glutton. With less pleasure, but scarce a second thought, I had bolted steaks of horse in France.
Roaming the Balkans, not once had I paused to consider the lives, deaths and identities of the animals reduced there to the ubiquitous meatball. But when I went to Turkey where, by chance, I witnessed the slaughter of a cow in a one-man abattoir, the road led to Damascus.
I have since then, in almost every country that rings the Mediterranean, Christian and Muslim, seen slaughter in rather larger abattoirs, surprised at the ease with which it has been possible to enter - but then it is a spectator sport of sorts, and the slaughtermen are by no means selfish with their pleasures. Slaughtermen? The term suggests some element of skill, but to kill sentient creatures day in, day out, must kill compassion, too, numb care and conscience.
The owner of a small Yorkshire abattoir once told me that he always employed as many married men as possible, "young boys do not have the necessary moral responsibility or respect ..."
In a Muslim abattoir in Lebanon or Tunisia all that is required is the brutal ability to drag an animal by nose and tail into the slaughter area, beat it with iron bars, kick its legs from under it, jump on its back - anything to make it fall on the slippery floor so that its head can be held back and its throat cut, more or less.
If more, then a minute or so of struggling to get to its feet will see consciousness slip away; if less, then the loss of blood is slow and, after two or three minutes of futile struggle, a big animal, gurgling horribly, will drown in its own blood.
This leads me to the perilous subject of ritual slaughter in this country, the halal of Muslims and the shechita of Jews, methods that involve the bleeding to death of the fully conscious animal.
All slaughtered food animals bleed to death, but in this country's licensed abattoirs they are stunned and deeply unconscious before their throats are cut; here it is not by any means a flawless procedure and is not a method even the Americans would tolerate for dispatching criminals, but it is significantly less cruel and less prolonged.
Ashcochet, a Jewish slaughterman, it is said, undergoes rigorous training and is unlikely to be careless or deliberately cruel; even so, non-Jewish scientists examining shechita, while recording loss of evoked response in calves as swift as 20 seconds, also recorded intervals of as long as 385 seconds - that is more than six minutes - before the calf ceased the struggle to get to its feet.
The average period for calves observed by one scientist between the cut and the end of the struggle was 171 seconds - almost three minutes. This hardly confirms the Jewish claim that death is pretty well immediate and the animals scarcely feel a thing.
The figures for the halal slaughter of calves are much the same - the average 215 seconds between the cut and unconsciousness, the best figure 132 seconds (more than two minutes), the worst 297.
With halal, however, we have the complication of private slaughter, totally unskilled, usually of sheep, notoriously for Eid-el-Kebir, an annual Islamic feast, but also to bring a blessing, for example, on a new house.
I raise these matters because, in the long kerfuffle over the euro last week, another report on religious slaughter from the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), an independent advisory body established by government in 1979, is likely to pass unnoticed.
Its first report in 1985 concluded that halal and shechita should come to an end within three years. Nothing was done and they did not.
In 1992 a spokesman for the then Conservative administration wrote to me that the issue was "a fundamental matter of religious belief " and that ministers "must allow people the freedom to practise this aspect of their religion". It is, however, not a belief, but a mere practice that is contrary to the spirit and teachings of both the Bible and the Koran; this assertion will no doubt encourage readers to bandy quotations till Kingdom come, but I am adamant that neither canonical text encourages or condones cruelty to animals.
This is a perilous subject, not for the correspondence that it will engender, but for the accusations of racial and religious prejudice that are inevitable when anyone is rash enough to criticise religious slaughter.
I admit to a prejudice against cruelty to animals and if in this I cross swords with other races and religions, so be it, for in my plea for compassion I occupy a higher moral ground than those who elevate ancient laws of hygiene into articles of faith.
I hold no brief for our native practices. To eat a lamb chop a lamb must be killed, but I would rather that it had not been forced, terrified, onto a transporter and carried hundreds of miles to its death. I want my chicken to have something resembling a natural life and would rather wring its neck than have it die suspended by its feet from a conveyor belt.
We have, nevertheless, in this country, a long history of caring for the welfare of all animals. We no longer bait the bull and bear. The first Cattle Cruelty Act was passed in 1822.
Slaughterhouse conditions have been, admittedly irregularly, under review for almost two centuries, and shechita was permitted out of kindness and respect when the Jewish population was a tiny minority of 50,000 or so and no one thought it would increase.
Halal slaughter was accepted on the back of shechita and the demand for it must now satisfy a minority of millions.
We are a multicultural society. This must mean mutual respect, not merely the surrender of the majority to the customs of the incoming minorities, and those already here must show some understanding of what we see as our developing responsibilities.
Would white Anglo-Saxons of vaguely Christian background be expected to accept without demur the sharia laws of Islam when we shed their Western equivalents centuries ago?
Why, then, must we tolerate halal slaughter and its Trojan Horse, shechita? FAWC again demands that we should not; FAWC is right; and the Government could do a great good by courageously obeying it.
Reader views (14)
erm I'm no expert, but I saw a film once about a man going round with a bolt gun, and having a metal bolt hitting your brain with such force is not really mild pain. Some research I read, showed that a cow hit with such a bolt in the brain, left bits of brain going all the way down, and found bits of brain contaminating lungs ribs etc. I think with mad cow disease etc that is not very safe. And finally this bolt method that smashes the cows brain...what makes you think mankind that it is less painful for the cow? It is after all God who created the animal, and you are taking a soul. Maybe the creator does know better than mankind? and maybe 20 years ago, this bolt was not even used, so what is all the fuss about? you invent a bolt and think it is far superior?? For sure it seems barbaric to eat blood and anyone who works in an abbatoir will confirm that if this method of bloodletting is not used the meat will go bad VERY QUICKLY!! If God has advised in 2 main religions that this method of slaughter, then to you it may look extremely painful, but perhaps it is not as painful as you imagine as some people who have had extreme injuries describe that when they become conscious they are not even aware that they have lost a leg!! Perhaps the animal goes into a state of unconsciousness regarding the pain threshold and scientific evidence certainly backs that theory. kosher and halal mean minimising pain for the animal. Does blowing up a brain cause less pain? prove it?
- m, uk, 20/01/2012 00:31
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erm I'm no expert, but I saw a film once about a man going round with a bolt gun, and having a metal bolt hitting your brain with such force is not really mild pain. Some research I read, showed that a cow hit with such a bolt in the brain, left bits of brain going all the way down, and found bits of brain contaminating lungs ribs etc. I think with mad cow disease etc that is not very safe. And finally this bolt method that smashes the cows brain...what makes you think mankind that it is less painful for the cow? It is after all God who created the animal, and you are taking a soul. Maybe the creator does know better than mankind? and maybe 20 years ago, this bolt was not even used, so what is all the fuss about? you invent a bolt and think it is far superior?? For sure it seems barbaric to eat blood and anyone who works in an abbatoir will confirm that if this method of bloodletting is not used the meat will go bad VERY QUICKLY!! If God has advised in 2 main religions that this method of slaughter, then to you it may look extremely painful, but perhaps it is not as painful as you imagine as some people who have had extreme injuries describe that when they become conscious they are not even aware that they have lost a leg!! Perhaps the animal goes into a state of unconsciousness regarding the pain threshold and scientific evidence certainly backs that theory. kosher and halal mean no minimising pain for the animal. Does blowing up a brain cause less pain? prove it?
- m, uk, 20/01/2012 00:29
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we should all continue to bombard the government to have this cruel and pointless method of slaughter banned
- pam cleaver, wiltshire england, 07/01/2011 19:45
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To the comment made by Heather, that humans are not meat eaters.
Simply untrue, the large amount of protein that we get from meat, and products made by animals such as milk and eggs, invariably is what has allowed us to develop into humans, along with cooking food that is, the fact that we do not have to sit and chew on raw veg for hours a day gave our ancestors the time to develop the brain size we now have, sadly some of the brains that now think so much about regressing back to the state of an Ameba. I am not a fan of making animals suffer unnecersarily, but what next, are we to ask all the worlds carnivorous animals to become "humane" and start munching grass?
- Jon, London, 09/04/2010 16:39
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Rather than taking the approach of banning things (superficially appealing but likely to drive certain practices underground), would it not be more effective for the Farm Animal Welfare Council to meet with vets, halal and shechita practitioners to discuss ways of improving their practices?
- David Le Page, Cape Town, South Africa, 18/03/2010 09:56
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I would say to people, put yourself in the animals' position being dragged out to be cruelly slaughtered and scalded alive. Feel the fear and pain in yourself, perhaps you may want to provide the animal rights by not eating red meat again.
- J Tan, NSW, Australia, 01/03/2010 10:53
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This is the 21st century and this kind of cruelty must not be accepted in civilized nations, no matter what "religion" they belong to. The lack of respect Muslims show to God's creatures is unacceptable and unconscionable. No wonder these countries are unkind to humans too, especially women. I always believe you cannot be a beast to animals and kind to humans. Shame on them!! I hope Belgium will judge them as any other animal abuser should.
- Nt, Toronto, Canada, 09/12/2009 17:40
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You stated "The first Cattle Cruelty Act was passed in 1822."
I can tell you Mr. Sidwell the first animal cruelty act was passed 1400 years ago by Islam. Halal is One of the Most Humane Methods of Animal Slaughter, muslims are taught through the Qu'ran that all animals should be treated with respect and well cared for. The goal is to slaughter the animal, limiting the amount of pain the animal will endure.
The nerve that delivers pain impulses is severed when the throat is slit. Therefore causing less pain. Do some real research on veterenairy(sp) or biology sites and not on vegetarian sites for this topic.
Many people have a false idea that this creates more pain for the animal, when it actually causes less pain than most "humane" ways of killing the animal. To end - if halal is not humane it isn't halal.
- Raidah Hayat, Peterborough, 09/08/2009 14:22
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To eat the corpse of an animal is wrong. We are not meat-eaters, hence the diseases that human beings suffer today.
To take a baby calve from its' mother is as barbaric as taking a baby human to slaughter - there really is no difference in the pain involved. However, I realise that not everyone are able to see things clearly, rather, most people follow the trends that man sets upon itself - albethey "false" trends.
My hope is that one day people will realise that every living thing has a right to life and until we can respect "life" as a whole, we have no hope of respecting anything else.
I am a realist. And you, meat eaters, are wrong!
- Heather, Mumbles, 23/01/2009 12:26
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I have just read what halal is, I am saddened. I shall think about nothing else all day. The only reason I wanted to know was because my local pizza delivery were advertising that all chicken and meat were halal, I shall not be buying any. My local Asda also stock this in the fresh meat section, WHY??
Thankyou for opening my eyes.
- Deanne Rix, Portsmouth, 23/10/2008 13:31
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One hundred per cent support Brian on this. Animal lovers are often dismissed as sentimental, whereas most of us are not sentimental but justifiably angry. Thanks Brian for publicising the gross and the inhumane. You have all of us behind you.
- Angela Patmore, Gosfield, Essex, 02/04/2008 12:18
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Treatment of animals will get better as treatment of people gets better. I admire your passion but I think all of you are misdirected, none more so than Mr. Sidwell. I have been to Lebenon many times and if the only slaughter he noticed was of the animals then he can't have had his eyes open for 90% of the trip. Halal and schetita can both be practiced without cruelty. Severing the nervous system at the back of the neck first kills all pain but keeps the animal conscious. The reason many people don't is they can't be bothered. They have neither the time nor the effort to add this burden to their load.
- Patrice Kracken, Cornwall, 04/01/2008 16:48
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I cant believe this sadistic and barbaric slaughter is excepted. It is not acceptable to treat frightened, defenceless animals like rubbish. We live in the 21st century, its time some nations, most of them for that matter, became civilised, and learned to respect the fact that animals, are living breathing, beings, are sentient, and feel fear, and pain as we do. Im sickened by the worlds lack of compassion for animals. Laws must change, people must change.
- Rose Bellamy, Cornwall, 26/07/2007 22:37
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Ritual or inhumane slaughter of animals is barbaric and belongs in the dark ages.
This cruelty should not be tolerated, if people want to live in a civilized country then they should be made to abide by its laws.
- Lynda, London UK, 15/03/2007 23:01
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