Animal Welfare (Non-stun Slaughter)

James Paice Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

Yes; one of the advantages of speaking first in a debate such as this is the many helpful interventions from informed Members that flag up items coming later in the speech. The hon. Lady has mentioned one of those. I support mandatory CCTV in all slaughterhouses. There have been some disgraceful episodes, which we have all seen, of animals being slaughtered incorrectly, in huge distress and much pain. No one, whatever side of the debate they are on, would support that. Having CCTV in slaughterhouses would seem to be a helpful weapon against such abuse.

[Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I wanted to pick up on my hon. Friend’s suggestion of a four-bar label. After he listed stunned and non-stunned, which I would support, he listed halal and kosher. I draw his attention to the distinct difference between those two. All kosher meat has to be killed by the shechita method, which is non-stunned, but not all halal meat is non-stunned. As he said, for 80% of halal meat the animal is electrically stunned first and then done in the normal way. Therefore, if he were to put halal on a label, he would be inviting people to discriminate on religious grounds as opposed to the welfare grounds of stunned or non-stunned. I want to make him and colleagues aware that we must be careful. We are talking about welfare, which has nothing to do with religion as he said in his opening comments.

[Mr Hollobone]

My right hon. Friend knows far more about this subject than I do, not least because he was a distinguished Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He makes a good point, but perhaps I did not explain myself as well as I might have done, which is a common failing of mine.

Personally, I have no problem with labelling food in a religious way. If my constituents went to the supermarket and saw packets of meat on the shelves marked with four boxes—stunned, non-stunned, halal and kosher—some meat might have ticks in the stunned and halal boxes, which is fine, and other products might have ticks in the halal and non-stunned boxes, which is also fine. It is helpful to give consumers that level of information and I do not see what the problem is with labelling food halal and kosher. After all, a Muslim constituent who wants to eat halal meat will be looking for that halal label. A Jewish constituent who wants to eat kosher food sees the shechita label—

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[Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I suspect that if we asked hon. Members of this House, I would not be seen as someone who was particularly squeamish or had too much of a conscience, given my agricultural credentials, which have already been referred to. I have to say, however, that the killing of an animal without stunning is, in my view, repugnant. It should be stopped, in an ideal world, but I accept that there are constraints on taking that final step. I say that not because I have read about the process or been pressurised by various people, but because I took the trouble when I was a Minister to go and watch it happening. It was clear to me that what was often referred to as religious slaughter—unstunned slaughter—was a political issue of some importance, so my private office organised my visit to a halal slaughterhouse to witness it happening. I stress that I have not been to a shechita abattoir.

I went to the halal abattoir, and I watched a number of sheep and cattle being slaughtered. The owner of the abattoir, himself a Muslim, made it absolutely clear to me that he did not like unstunned killing, but that when it comes to the obligation that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) touched on a moment ago, the decision as to whether something is halal is taken by the imam who is present at the time. A prayer has to be said during the slaughter of all halal meat, but the decision on whether an animal is stunned or unstunned is taken by the imam. A number of Muslim organisations take it upon themselves to decide what is and what is not halal. When I was a Minister, I organised meetings with representatives of many Muslim organisations and groups, and I am afraid that there was absolutely no meeting of minds—I do not mean with me, but between the organisations across the table. I sat back and listened to some very strong language between Muslim abattoir operators who always pre-stun everything and whose imams are happy to say the prayer when an animal has its throat cut after being electrically stunned.

Going back to my own experience, I have watched a number of sheep having their throat cut without pre-stunning. As anyone who has visited an abattoir will know, the sheep were held in a conventional rising V-belt. They are hugged by the V-belt, which is made up of two belts, and when they reach the top it is their turn to be killed. Normally the animals are stunned before their throat is cut, but what I saw was without the stunning. Incidentally, that is how the abattoirs address the issue that one animal should not see another animal being slaughtered, because, in a V-belt, the next animal in line is behind the one being slaughtered. I saw a number of sheep being slaughtered, and the average time before those animals appeared to become senseless—in other words, before their head dropped, which most people assume is the point at which an animal collapses—was between 15 and 18 seconds.

I have also watched cattle being slaughtered, and I am afraid that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) underestimates the length of time before cattle become senseless. He referred to two minutes, but when I was a Minister I was told that it often takes a lot longer. In the slaughters I witnessed it was nearly always much longer than two minutes. I watched animals going into the slaughter box, where their head was lifted by a form of restraint to expose the neck, which was then cut. Their heart, of course, was still going. Blood gushed out—there is no alternative word, and I am not overemphasising this—and stretched several feet in front of the animal. The gushing went on for minute after minute. Animals are not held up in such restraints, so they remain standing on their legs. If we take the point that an animal becomes senseless when it collapses, or that it collapses at the point when it becomes senseless, we are talking about four to six minutes. I saw animals stand for six minutes before they collapsed. That is my experience.

The owner of the abattoir I visited was trying to be helpful. He clearly understood the reason for my presence and would have preferred not to have to slaughter unstunned animals, so he also did what has been referred to as a post-cut stun, in which a bolt is fired into the animal’s head at the moment its throat is cut. Of course, the animal collapsed immediately. Any animal in the conventional slaughter process collapses senseless at the moment the bolt is fired. Such post-cut stunning strikes me as a significant alternative option. I am concerned about the disagreement within the Muslim religion about what constitutes halal, but I believe that we should be able to find a way forward.

My hon. Friend did not refer to New Zealand, but I have also witnessed the halal slaughter of both sheep and cattle in New Zealand slaughterhouses. The animals were all electrically stunned, rather than stunned with a retained bolt, before their throat was cut. In all the cases I witnessed, the animals appeared to be completely senseless from the electrical shock when their throat was cut. I therefore conclude that the animals were not suffering, but my experience in this country is different.

As an aside, we have heard from a number of quarters about mis-stunning. I was going to say that mis-stunning is regrettable, but that is not strong enough. Mis-stunning is not good enough, but it is a distraction from the issue. Mis-stunning should be dealt with. Even if every animal is stunned, mis-stunning should be addressed through better training and the proper prosecution of abattoirs in which it takes place.

I do not want to venture too far into the religious arguments—I strongly feel that non-stun slaughter is an animal welfare issue—but the other issue is what constitutes what is legitimate under sharia law and Muslim beliefs. The argument put to me by those who support non-stun slaughter is that the animal must be able to recover if its throat is not cut. An animal clearly cannot recover from a bolt fired from a bolt gun, and therefore it is not permissible. The debate is much more balanced on electrical pre-cut stunning. The problem—I am sure this has already been put to my hon. Friend—is that members of the Muslim community who would be prepared to entertain electrical stunning as acceptable, other than those who already do, want evidence that animals are able to recover. In other words, if an animal’s throat is not cut after it has been electrocuted, they want evidence that, moments later, it will recover and be perfectly all right and undamaged. The problem—this is bureaucracy gone mad—is that supporters cannot provide that evidence because it then becomes animal experimentation, which requires a Home Office licence. The Home Office will not grant such a licence, so supporters cannot provide the evidence that might convince people of the argument.

Earlier, somebody said that pigs do not count because they are not eaten by either Muslims or Jews, and I also want to address the issue of training.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am genuinely interested in the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, and I bow to his far superior knowledge of the subject. May I ask him about the head-only electrical stun? I have been told by animal welfare groups that, under UK law, sheep only have to have one artery, rather than both arteries, cut, which often means that, because the electrical stun only lasts between 20 and 40 seconds, there is a good chance that a sheep will recover consciousness before it bleeds to death. Will he enlighten me as to whether that is the case? I have been told that, even though they have been stunned, some 4 million sheep a year recover consciousness before their throats are cut.

[Sir James Paice]

I genuinely do not know. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that statistic. All I would say is that I have watched quite a number of sheep having their throat cut after electrical stunning not just in the UK but in New Zealand, and they usually become insensible—in other words, their head collapses—in about 15 seconds. I have never witnessed an animal come round at a point at which it might suffer. I cannot answer the hon. Lady’s question.

Understandably, there has been a lot of debate about labelling, not least because a lot of shechita meat is not acceptable for Jews to eat and therefore goes into the mainstream, as does a lot of halal, whether or not it has been pre-cut stunned. Nobody can argue against informing consumers, of course, and I would never dream of doing so. I have advocated all sorts of labelling, and I would support it in this instance, except that I question whether it would work. It is not that I think that consumers would not respond to it; however, it is wide open to abuse. It would be extremely difficult to enforce and monitor, and to trace pieces of meat as they moved through the supply chain to determine whether the labelling on whether the animal was stunned before slaughter was correct.

I am afraid that I do not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering about putting religious connotations into labelling, because I wholly object to anybody discriminating on those grounds. People have written to me saying, “I object to buying meat that has had some Muslim say a prayer over it.” I reject that attitude totally; in my view, it is racist, and I will have nothing to do with it. I am concerned purely with welfare.

I want to mention the distinction that was made concerning the Jewish process, which renders an animal effectively dead the moment its throat is cut. As I said, I have never actually witnessed that process, so I cannot speak from experience, but if that is the case, I cannot see how that community can argue against a post-cut stun. If their view is that the animal is dead the moment its throat is cut, what is wrong with a bolt or electrical shock seconds afterwards? According to that argument, it is effectively being applied to a dead animal.

The conclusion that I came to when I was the Minister responsible—frankly, I wish that I had had time to pursue the issue as I wanted to—was that the way forward to reduce suffering while recognising the need for proper respect for religious rites was to introduce compulsory post-cut stunning. That would have been far more effective at reducing suffering, as I witnessed. I also thought that the arguments used by those who opposed a pre-cut stun would fall aside, if their view is that the animal is dead immediately after stunning.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his well-informed and impressive speech. Does he see no role for additional labelling?

[Sir James Paice]

I am certainly not against labelling. As I said a few minutes ago, I have recommended and indeed driven forward initiatives to provide consumers with more information, and I am not averse to the idea of doing so in this context. I have grave doubts about how effective it would be, simply because I fear that it would be difficult to enforce.

My final comment relates to training. I discussed the issue of mis-stunning, and I am sure that all of us have often heard different groups say that Jewish slaughtermen are far more effectively trained than Muslim slaughtermen. I have heard all sorts of accusations about some halal slaughtermen using blunt knives to saw away at necks and so on. All that I can say—maybe this is obvious—is that the examples that I witnessed in both this country and New Zealand do not sustain that argument. As far as I could tell—I am not a complete layman; I have been to many abattoirs in my lifetime—the animals were cut as quickly as possible with very sharp weapons, and the training was perfect. Whatever system of slaughter is used—pre-cut stun, post-cut stun or anything else—we cannot accept anything less than highly skilled operators. I certainly believe that that is a matter for enforcement, whatever else might be decided.

I do not know whether I shall speak again in this place during the next five weeks, but if this is my last speech, I hope that it is recognised as a seriously intentioned argument for moving forward in the interests of animal welfare and nothing else. I strongly urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consider the post-cut stun—it is a compromise—as a way of effectively reducing unwanted and unnecessary suffering.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

The right hon. Gentleman will forgive me for saying that if that was his last speech—we all hope that it was not—it was an extremely fine contribution at the end of a long and distinguished career.

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[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard, and to follow the hon. Members for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) and for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), who succinctly set out the positions of the Jewish and Muslim faiths on the stunning and non-stunning of meat. It is always useful to debate a range of subjects, but this debate seems to involve a sense of déjà vu. We discussed the issue on 4 November, and I see present Members who contributed to that debate, along with others. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) chaired that debate. I am surprised that the issue has come around for discussion again so quickly. If former and current Ministers did not already know the range of views on this matter, we have made them very clear over the years.

I want to say a few words about why I certainly do not support the e-petition. I have several thousand Muslim and Jewish constituents, and I am representing their point of view. I am also against stunning because of my own view about animal welfare. I have been a vegetarian for the past 32 years. I can assure Members that I am not squeamish about killing animals: on occasion, animal welfare necessitates the death of animals. I have, in the recent past, put animals—particularly rabbits —out of their misery when I felt that their poor quality of life required action, so I feel that I speak on animal welfare with some authority. The hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) suggested in an intervention that perhaps more people should go vegan or vegetarian. Sometimes, when the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) suggests that we should have a day in Parliament each year when people do not eat meat, she is ridiculed. That is wrong.

In preparing for this speech, I looked at the amount of meat that is consumed in this country. We have already heard about the glut of meat in the market. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has consulted on the consumption habits of the British public for the past 20 years. In the last year for which the figures are known, people consumed around 190 grams of chicken each week. If we multiply that figure by 52, we get around 9.8 kg—almost 10 kg of chicken every year. If broilers are slaughtered at eight weeks and the average carcase weight is around 1.8 kg, that means that some people, at least, are eating at least six chickens a year. If we extrapolate those figures, we come to the view that every year in the UK approximately 2.6 million cattle, 10 million pigs, 14.5 million sheep and lambs, 80 million fish and 950 million birds are slaughtered for human consumption. I have to ask: why are we consuming so much meat?

I will contradict some of my colleagues in saying that shechita accounts for only 1% of the totals that I just read out, and it is incorrect to say that it enters the food chain: it does not. There are approximately 300,000 Jewish people in this country, and the meat produced for them goes to the community itself. The Beth Din already label kosher meat.

[Sir James Paice]

If all shechita slaughtered meat is eaten by Jews, is my hon. Friend saying that they are eating the hind quarters? That is forbidden. What happens to the hind quarters?

[Dr Offord]

I take my right hon. Friend’s point about all parts of the animal—I do not know whether they are discarded, or whether my right hon. Friend knows the answer to that.

[Sir James Paice]

They are sold into the rest of the supply.

[Dr Offord]

My right hon. Friend may say that, but he has not come forward with any evidence to convince me. Some people may argue that slaughter is humane if it is—