John Blackwell, president-elect of the BVA

Animal rights should come before religious beliefs, say president elect

The president-elect of the BVA has said religious customs for the production of halal and kosher meat, should be adapted to prevent animals suffering during slaughter.

John Blackwell told BBC Radio Four and The Times newspaper that animals needed to be stunned before they are killed, to render them "insensible to pain."

A Food Standards Agency (FSA) animal welfare survey carried out in abattoirs across Great Britain in 2011, found most animals for halal meat were stunned first.

But none of the animals slaughtered for the kosher market were pre-stunned before slaughter.

Instead they are hung upside down and their throats slit to drain their blood – Mr Blackell said that sheep could remain conscious for up to seven seconds after having their throat cut, while in cattle they could be conscious for two minutes.

But Jonathan Arkush, from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, told the BBC that Mr Blackwell's comments were "misleading".

He said  Jewish practices for slaughtering animals were humane and designed to bring about death "Very quickly". 

He also said press -stunning failed in as much as 31 per cent of cases, causing " enormous pain and distress."

A BVA statement said it had "been campaigning for many years for all animals to be stunned before slaughter because slaughter without pre-stunning unnecessarily compromises animal welfare.

"Our position is supported by the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe, the Farm Animal Welfare Committee, the Humane Slaughter Association (HSA), and the RSPCA," the statement added.

BVA, along with HSA and RSPCA, also state that if slaughter without stunning is allowed to continue under religious exemption, the Government should instead introduce immediate post cut stunning.

It is among a number of measures that the three organisations are calling for.
Others include:

• Working with Government agencies, authorities and stakeholders, to enforce of existing welfare at slaughter legislation where non-stun slaughter takes place
• Ensuring sufficient time and facilities for the official veterinary surgeon to be able to adequately monitor welfare when non-stun slaughter is taking place
  
• Educating consumers about animal welfare at slaughter and giving them confidence when buying meat or meat products by providing them with reliable explanatory information about food labels or logos of assurance schemes that require stunning before slaughter, so they can make informed choices
  
• Meeting and working with representatives of the relevant religious communities
  

 
In his speech at the BVA annual London dinner last month, BVA President Robin Hargreaves said: “Sometimes being the trusted voice on animal welfare means we have to deliver difficult messages, perhaps most notably on welfare at slaughter and the welfare implications of non-stun slaughter.

"It is the single issue that attracts the most comment and concern amongst our members. It is also the issue on which we have a huge amount of political support, but on which the Government feels its hands are tied.

“We must remember that this concerns millions of individual animals. That is why we have been seeking to find practical solutions. While they wouldn’t eliminate the problem they might at least reduce the welfare harm caused by slaughter without stunning.

“For these animals we want to see post-cut stunning to reduce the individual harm. And we want to see a system of labelling that would reduce the likelihood of products entering the mainstream market, which in turn would reduce the total number of animals affected.

“We also seek to educate and inform. As the recent House of Lords debate on this issue revealed, scientific fact can be obfuscated by entrenched belief. We want to move the discussion away from one about religious freedoms, and towards one about consumer choice and animal welfare.”

The FSA survey showed that more than 40 million cattle, sheep, pigs and calves and around 900 million poultry, are slaughtered each year in the UK.
Of those, some three per cent of cattle, ten per cent of sheep and goats, and four per cent of poultry were not stunned before slaughter.