Who the Halal cares?

It’s recently come out that many universities serve halal meat without labelling the product. It’s controversial because unlike general farming procedure, where the animal is usually stunned before being skilled, the animal is killed via their throat being slit through their jugular vein, artery and windpipe. Not the loveliest thing to think about, I’ll admit that, but did you really think that factory farms were a bed of roses?

This stuff doesn’t come from a bed of roses.

Sorry to invoke graphic details here, but in standard factory farms animals have their ears clipped, horns cut off, are castrated, are artificially inseminated over and over again – all without anaesthesia, might I add, and that’s their life from cradle to grave. Halal isn’t humane? Well neither is that. They don’t put that on the packaging in Tesco. Do you care? Did you even know? You can’t really pick and choose when to be a new-found warrior for animal rights.

Let’s be real, you didn’t become an animal rights activist overnight, you’re specifically picking on the practices of the Muslims – an extremely marginalised group in British society at the moment.

Kosher meat involves a very similar slaughter practice to Halal meat  – where is the outcry over that? Nowhere, because Judaism isn’t our current target. Cut the subliminal prejudice. If you were really as righteous as you claimed to be, you would probably be vegetarian.

Enjoy one of these? Then don’t moan about Halal.

I’m not encouraging you to be vegetarian – I eat meat and consume dairy so to denounce using animal products would be hypocritical of me. It’s just a note against blindly throwing around terms such as ‘inhumane’ and ‘animal rights’ when you only want to apply them to the practices of one group, especially a group that is facing a lot of prejudice and unfair generalisations at this point in time.

MPs have just rejected a Halal Meat labelling plan attempting to force shops and supermarkets to let the consumer know where their food came from. And maybe that’s wrong – because I agree that we as consumers do have the right to know what about the product we’re purchasing. However, this can’t just apply to Halal meat, this should apply to everything – after all, if you’re so concerned about consumer’s rights, you’ll care about more than whether it’s Halal or not.

You can read more of Zahra’s thoughts here: http://zandaluciawynne.blogspot.co.uk/