Politics
Halal and kosher meat racist panic
Conservative MP Esther McVey has introduced a motion to parliament calling for the labelling of all halal and kosher meat in the UK.
McVey argued that her proposal was about “animal welfare, transparency in meat production and consumer choice”. However, the actual content of her speech revealed this to be a load of tripe.
Rather, this is an open nod to the Islamophobes and antisemites who don’t want to touch meat handled by people they despise. It’s the parliamentary counterpart to the performative racists who complain about halal meat being sold in fucking Subway.
Halal and kosher ‘concerns’ are just racist dogwhistles
The majority of MPs who presented the motion were Tories, including Roger Gale, Alberto Costa, Karen Bradley, and Edward Leigh. Joining them were Democratic Unionist Sammy Wilson, Labour’s Graham Stringer, Reform UK’s Lee Anderson and Sarah Pochin, and Independant Rupert Lowe.
With that line-up, you know they’ll have some very normal and not-at-all racist things to say about halal and kosher food.
McVey began her speech with the shakey reassurance that her proposal:
does not seek to ban halal or kosher meat. It seeks to ensure that it is clearly labelled. It is important that consumers have such information so that they can make an informed choice about what they are buying. Currently consumers do not have that information, and many are purchasing and consuming halal and kosher meat without their knowledge and agreement.
The unique process of halal and kosher meat requires the animal to have its throat slit. In the case of halal meat, the animal is often stunned before it is killed—although it might not be—and for the shechita killing for kosher meat, there is no pre-stunning. This lack of stunning causes the animal to experience severe pain. An individual concerned about animal welfare would want to know if the animal has been stunned prior to slaughter. Likewise, there are many religious groups who want to know what they are consuming too and whether the meat has been blessed by another religion. In all those cases clear labelling is essential to make an informed choice.
What an excellent argument about religious people not wanting to eat food blessed by another religion. It’s strange that McVey never actually mentions it again.
Surely, if the blessings were a problem, the issues would be raised by an MP who follows a religion that places ritual requirements on animal slaughter and blessing? Instead, it’s being sponsored by the likes of racist shitheads like Rupert Lowe.
‘Production is clearly going way beyond that’
The current laws for slaughter in England and Wales require that the animals are stunned before death. However, the legislation makes an exception for non-stun methods in the case of religious requirements for halal and kosher slaughter.
Around 88% of halal meat in the UK comes from animals that were stunned prior to slaughter. However, McVey isn’t pushing for labels that mention whether or not the animal was stunned. She’s pushing for labels on whether it’s halal or kosher. It’s almost as if the stigma is the point, rather than the stunning. Funny that, isn’t it?
The analysis shows that the proportion of meat supplied by non-stun slaughter is about four times greater than the proportion of Muslims and Jews in the UK. Although Government guidance is clear that meat that results from non-stun slaughter “must be intended for consumption by Jews or Muslims”, production is clearly going way beyond that, so much so that the UK now exports halal meat. Between 2018 and 2019, there was an almost 700% increase in the volume of sheep meat exported to the United Arab Emirates, all of which is required to be halal.
This is a very wordy argument for something that isn’t actually related to the issue of labeling. If McVey had problems with the over-production of non-stunned meat, she’d be trying to legislate against that.
Instead, she’s arguing for labels which contain no information about stunning practices. This is because McVey has a problem with the people the meat is intended for, not the meat itself.
‘Two-tier system’
She goes on:
Clearly, without compulsory labelling of non-stunned meat, slaughterhouses have gone down the route of producing more of it. In effect, a two-tier system has been created, whereby some slaughterhouses comply with stunning laws and others do not, citing the religious exemption, though without ever intending to focus their sale on that market. Unfortunately, a driver of the market for non-stunned meat is the fact that a step of the process is removed, meaning that production of non-stunned meat is cheaper. Supermarkets and food outlets can purchase that cheaper meat without ever declaring it to the customer, which is not what was intended by the legislation.
I’d genuinely love to see evidence that non-stunned meat is cheaper than meat from stunned animals. When I looked, I couldn’t find a single piece of evidence to support this point. I did, however, find several suggestions that halal and kosher meat are sometimes more expensive, as they place extra requirements on the process.
McVey finished her argument by saying:
Food and You 2, which is a biannual official statistic survey commissioned by the Food Standards Agency, found that the most common spontaneously expressed food concern in 2024 was “food production method”. In August 2022, almost 99% of respondents to the Government’s call for evidence on labelling for animal welfare said that method-of-slaughter labelling should be introduced. In research from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, 92% of halal consumers state that clear halal certification is important, so is it not time we updated our regulations and demanded that our meat was clearly and fully labelled, so that we know what we are buying and eating?
That’s nice, isn’t it? But again, labelling for halal meat would give zero information on stun vs non-stun slaughter method. And again, this bill isn’t being proposed to help out Muslims, as you can tell by the fact that vocal Islamophobes like Sarah Pochin are behind it.
The right is pushing for the labeling of halal and kosher meat in order to whip up a furor surrounding halal and kosher meat. The more people they can provoke to reject religiously slaughtered meat even being brought into their vicinity, the harder everyday life becomes for Muslims and Jewish people.
This is about stigma, not slaughter.
Featured image via the Canary