Muslims make up 3 per cent of the UK population, but consume 20% of all the red meat sold in the country.
I was extremely doubtful of the veracity of this stat, reading it for the first time as I did in one of our quality tabloids. All the recent controversies now suggest the figures may be accurate, but it’s not Muslims consuming all this halal meat.
We have to be grateful to the Daily Mail for providing an ever expending list of outlets that sell halal. This apparently includes Waitrose, Costa coffee, Wembley Stadium and some has even found its way into the supply chain at McDonald’s. The far-right EDL have been protesting outside of Kentucky Fried Chicken. If you fancy a flutter at Ascot, it’s on the menu there too. It’s a sign of how Muslims have weaved their way into the fabric of the country.
The scare story goes that animals have been “ritually slaughtered” by Muslims. This sounds alarming, but is literally a two second prayer said by the slaughterman. If you don’t believe in God, the slaughterman could have been having chat with his workmates instead, or listening to Kylie on the wireless for all this matters.
What the Daily Mail’s meat McCarthyism has settled on as the issue is whether animals have been electrocuted before slaughter. It’ll be interesting to see if this hysteria plants itself in the minds of the British public who have used the word kosher, which has the same issue about stunning, as a byword in quality. However, the situation with halal is more complex than this - the RSPCA state that 90% of halal meat is actually stunned. That is not to say that there aren’t prominent Muslims denouncing this state of affairs and calling for more stun-free produce.
I believe the debate needs to move on a bit and recognise the nature of the industrial meat production that exists today. If we want to look at what Islamic teachings say, there is also the belief that an animal should not see another animal be killed. If you take away the slaughter conveyor belt which animals are hoarded on to, given the quantities of meat being consumed, guaranteeing a classical slaughter is going to drive up prices. Would the Muslim public be willing to pay? My guess is not.
There is a lot of obsessing by Muslims about the state of affairs at point of slaughter. We'll all have received the text messages about boycotting KFC, Nandos or some other outlet. There is though little or no thought about the welfare of animals during their lives. The conditions in which many animals exist should make everyone pause and think – if nothing else, it affects the quality of meat and poultry you are putting it in your body. The disingenuousness of the right-wing tabloids means we may not get week after week of scare stories about the lives of our chickens so that they can be sold at bargain basement prices, but this does nevertheless matter.
A great deal of halal meat is imported. While what is sold at butchers is generally slaughtered within the UK, I understand that the majority of meat used at restaurants and takeaways is shipped in from countries like Brazil and Thailand. This is a not inconsiderable carbon footprint and we need to question its necessity and desirability.
For the sake of our health and planet, we should be eating less meat. Five-a-day prayers accompanied by five-a-day fruit and veg?
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