If you’ve caught headlines or have lurked around Twitter recently as I have, you would be forgiven for thinking that halal meat has completely flushed out the traditional British meat market. True, the halal meat market in Britain is now worth £2.2 billion a year and I would say that I have certainly noticed more halal meat around the high street/supermarkets in recent years. I have also noticed a particularly heated tide of opposition to halal meat in recent weeks. This is a tide of opposition that seems to bring with it some pretty xenophobic and generally anti-Muslim sentiment. I’m going to pop a little disclaimer in here: I am not calling anyone racist. I think we should all be able to have an honest discussion about where we have got our information from and whether or not all this ‘halal hysteria’ is actually based on legitimate concern for animal welfare or if we really are more worried about “our culture” being altered. If you are feeling uneasy about change, I don’t think that makes you a racist, I think that makes you human. But as a friend of mine said the other day:
“It’s interesting how people only care about the ‘humaneness’ of a method of slaughter when suddenly meat is being slaughtered in accordance with Muslim tradition… but come on, be brave. Just say “I’m unhappy because this method is a Muslim method of slaughter, and I feel that my culture is being impinged upon”. I disagree with that, but at least everyone is being honest about how they feel. I’d be very interested to hear an anti-halal argument about animal welfare which isn’t “anti-Muslim” at its heart.”
I am a recent convert from the “down with halal” camp. I used to work stacking shelves in Sainsbury’s and when I noticed that we were serving halal meat for the first time, I was deeply in opposition. For the next few years (in fact, right up to a few weeks ago) I was a vocal opponent of halal meat and would avoid it where I could. It’s when you start trying to avoid something that you notice how many places sell it. That’s the same with everything though, isn’t it? If you find out you are a Coeliac and can’t eat gluten that is when you notice just how many foods (and drinks) gluten is in. Gravy, Weatherspoon’s chips, crisps, everything. It was more difficult than expected, avoiding halal so I sort of dropped it. I figured “Hey, British methods of slaughter aren’t exactly wonderful: halal is just worse because they just grab the animal, hang it upside down and slit its throat.”
I was wrong. In fact, between 80-90% of halal meat is pre-stunned it is Kosher meat that cannot be stunned by religious tradition. I never knew this before I started researching the ‘halal debate’ last week when Britain First called for a boycott against Subway for removing “ham and bacon after ‘strong demand’ from Muslims.” Of course, the “strong demand” referred to here is really strong consumer demand, not the kind of demand that hostage-takers make, as I feel is implied. This story was quickly followed on the 7th May by The Sun’s complete non-story front page headline “HALAL SECRET OF PIZZA EXPRESS” which caused uproar on both sides of the political spectrum. In fact, Pizza Express just serves halal chicken and has released a statement pointing out that this information has been available on their website all along. It seems that halal meat has become another focal point (along with immigration and the EU) in what appears to be a time of increasingly polarised popular opinion.
Whenever some big media-hyped story like this surfaces I like to go over to Facebook and Twitter and check out the reaction and maybe jump into the tide of comments on the subject. In this regard, I found myself swimming against a tide of anti-Muslim sentiment and seemingly passive/defensive remarks referring to British people “bending our will” to accommodate “Muslims” and it being un-“PC” (politically correct, of course) to have a problem with halal. No no no. It is not “un-PC” to have a problem with halal. If you are not a vegetarian/stocking all of your meat from very ethical places/an animal rights activist it is hypocritical for you to take issue with halal on animal welfare grounds. That is the issue here. If you are a regular burger van/supermarket/fish and chip shop meat-eater and you are vehemently against halal meat because it is ‘barbaric’ or ‘unethical’ then you are being a hypocrite. Of course, it can not be expected of everyone to know the ins and outs of the meat industry and many people eat meat completely unaware of (or unperturbed by) animal rights abuses in a number of settings. If, however, you do learn that halal slaughter is in 80-90% of cases just as inhumane as “our own” slaughter methods and you continue to campaign against halal slaughter from the platform of ‘animal rights’, maybe it is time to consider what it is that you actually have a problem with?
Some Air From Claire 