Animal Welfare (Non-stun Slaughter)

Lee Scott Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) on his speech, which was moving and hugely well informed. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on his part in this debate.

I am afraid that I do not have such experience or erudition to add to the debate, but I will make one or two points. I am Jewish. I was not brought up to eat kosher meat, and I am not agricultural. I have visited slaughterhouses on two occasions, which I will mention in a minute. I make these comments entirely because of what I have learned from speaking to my constituents—both those who are religious and those who simply follow the traditions—after debates on the subject in this House.

Perhaps I should mention that I have received a petition from nearly 2,000 members of the Muslim community in Watford, suitably supported by members of the Jewish community, who were rather fewer in number because there are rather fewer Jewish people in Watford than Muslims. It came about as a result of comments by the new president of the British Veterinary Association that appeared in The Times.

I took the petition to the Prime Minister, who seemed clear on the Government’s view, although of course the Minister will say what he has to say. The Prime Minister said that he was “delighted to support” my campaign in Watford, and that he was

“very happy to confirm that while I am Prime Minister of this country”,

both halal and kosher killing are

“safe in Britain”.

That is a clear view from the Government. If I may speak for the Opposition—I have never had the arrogance to do so before, but I think that I am right in saying this—I imagine their official view to be much the same.

I have visited two abattoirs in my life, one using conventional slaughter and the other religious slaughter. I did not visit them as a Member of Parliament, and again, I cannot compare my visits and level of observation to those of my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire. I must say that I did not see a material difference between the death of the animal in the conventional abattoir, which was stunned, and the religious slaughter, which was done without stunning. I can say without discrimination that I was absolutely put off eating meat for some time by both of them—I am not a vegetarian, but I could see an argument for it —but I cannot and would not say that I noticed any material difference in the suffering of the animals in either case.

Given that it is one of our great beliefs in this country that people’s religious traditions and views should be upheld, and that the issue is important to religious Muslims and religious Jewish people, I believe that it is the Government’s job to stipulate standards of cleanliness and to deal with other more modern issues. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) mentioned, religious texts can be interpreted in a modern way, which I am sure must include modern versions of safety and cleanliness, but I cannot accept that in today’s society, religious traditions held with such belief by people in this country could be declared illegal by the Government. I will do everything in my power, modest though that power may be, to reject anything of the sort.

[Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend that people’s freedom to practise religion, and to eat meat produced as they feel it should be produced, is vital. Does he agree that this is really a matter of protecting animals? A bad abattoir is a bad abattoir, whatever process it might carry out. That is what we should stamp out: bad abattoirs, not the method by which the animals are slaughtered.

Animal Slaughter (Religious Methods)

Lee Scott Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. Like others, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), not only on the report, but on the way he has conducted this debate, as others have as well, because it is an emotive subject and it is very important that we tackle it in a calm, collected way.

It will not surprise my hon. Friend to know that I do not agree with everything that he said, but the truth of the matter is that my constituents and I—I only eat kosher meat, as he knows—believe passionately that the welfare of the animal is vital. To that end and after earlier debates, I thought, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), that it was necessary to visit an abattoir and see the process at first hand. We did that—I visited kosher and non-kosher abattoirs—and I am going to be very honest: as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) said, anyone who says that there is a pleasant way of killing an animal is kidding themselves. There is not a pleasant way of killing an animal.

We must also consider the wider aspects of the issue. As my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) said, what happened before the animal was killed is also important. Was the animal living in terrible circumstances? It could be killed in the most humane way possible, but if it lived its whole life in terrible circumstances, that is also not a pleasant thing to think about.

What is shechita? Shechita is the Jewish religious humane method of animal slaughter for food. It is the only method of preparing meat and poultry in accordance with Jewish tradition—meat and poultry that an observant Jew can eat. As was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman)—I call her my hon. Friend even though I should say “the hon. Member”—shechita is carried out by a trained person called a shochet, who has been trained for many years before taking up the profession.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend confirm that the shochet holds two licences? One is issued by the Food Standards Agency and the other by the Rabbinical Commission for the Licensing of Shochetim. That rabbinical commission is a statutory body established by Parliament under the Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations 1995.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Scott]

My hon. Friend is perfectly right: that is the case.

The chalaf is the surgically sharp instrument that is used, and the incision made cuts off the blood supply to the brain straight away. Shechita conforms to the EU definition of stunning. Immediately, the brain is inactive and the animal feels no pain—to the best of our knowledge. With any form of killing at an abattoir, we do not know exactly what an animal might go through.

Let me move on to labelling. The Jewish community is not against food labelling; in fact, we invented it. The hechsher, which is on every piece of kosher meat to prove that it is kosher so that the community can eat it, has existed since time immemorial; it has always been there. However, it would be inappropriate if meat was labelled in a way that was purely of a religious nature. If it is to be labelled, every aspect has to be covered. We have heard about some of the methods of killing animals or stunning animals, such as gassing and electrocution, and we have heard a lot about mis-stuns. There are reports that the figure could be as high as 20 million. We do not know how many animals are mis-stunned. That is perfectly true, but we should know. That should be recorded as well, because if we are to start recording, if we are to start labelling, that has to be across the board.

I believe that one of the great things about our country is the freedom of people to practise their religions and live according to their holy books as they believe they should. I believe that it is vital that that be allowed to continue, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton rightly mentioned, all that would happen if it was not would be that meat was imported from areas that are perhaps far less stringent than we are in the United Kingdom.

They were not from my own constituency, but I received e-mails before this debate in which people said that they were concerned not about how the animal was killed, but about whether a religious prayer had been said over the animal. I do not think that that has any role to play in this whatever. We are talking about how the animal is treated—the welfare of the animal. I believe that whatever side of the debate we come from, we all want the same, which is for the animal to have the best possible life and the least pain possible when it is killed, and I believe that shechita does meet that.