Non-stun Slaughter of Animals
Debate between Rupert Lowe and Naz Shah(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Rupert Lowe
I do, and I will cover that at the end of my speech.
We are all eating halal meat without knowing it. I find that morally repugnant. We should ban non-stun slaughter, we should ban halal slaughter and we should ban kosher slaughter.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
Will the hon. Member clarify what he proposes? Eighty-eight per cent. of halal meat is pre-stunned. Is he just after pre-stunned meat? Is that the crux of his argument?
Rupert Lowe
The issue of stunning is complex, as the hon. Member probably knows. The halal stun is a lower voltage than the non-halal stun. As the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) rightly said, chickens are put into an electric bath before they are killed. It is the level of the stun that counts.
Freedom of belief does not mean freedom to cause cruel and brutal pain. When I care for animals, I have the most stringent set of rules to abide by. I am regulated on how I house them, feed them and transport them. There are inspections, paperwork and codes of practice, all to make sure they are treated with dignity.