Halal or Not Halal? That is the Question.

Today's news is full of stories that Halal meat is being sold in the UK without being labelled as such. Now let's get this clear: according to the BBC, 90% of UK Halal meat is from animals which have been pre-stunned, so they conform to legal requirements without the religious exemption. So what's the issue?

During the Foot & Mouth crisis, having seen videos of a man running around a field with a bolt gun after a sheep, I decided to look into legal slaughter practices, (he should have been imprisoned in my opinion), and in doing so I also looked into Halal practices.

The biggest issue for me, way bigger than whether someone speaks magic spells over my food, is that correctly carried out, to the spirit and letter of the law, legal slaughter in the UK is as humane as it's reasonably practical to be. And in my view it's far preferable to death from predation or disease in the wild.

The problem I have is that human nature does not pre-dispose us to treat other humans, let alone other animals, with the dignity, respect and humanity required when there is so much potential for suffering. So we need far greater safeguards against the darker side of our nature in the slaughtering process. I have some in mind, which include routine oversight by independent observers, but the cost would be unacceptable to many people who just want a cheap meal to feed their families.

There are three main requirements for the practice of Halal slaughter: ritual cleanliness; hygienic cleanliness; and minimising the suffering of the animal being slaughtered. Whatever you think of Islam today, these requirements clearly underlie Halal practices and they are entirely consistent with the best ethical practice in humane animal slaughter.

Considering the time when these requirements were established, there was not the knowledge of disease causes we have today, and the distinction between ritual and hygienic cleanliness was entirely blurred. Speaking magic spells over the animal was just as important as ensuring that the animal did not have a communicable disease. The strict requirements of the blade, and the manner in which it is used, are clearly intended to minimise pain and bring about unconsciousness as quickly as possible, both requirements for humane slaughter.

The prohibition on pre-stunning prevents botched attempts which could cause unimaginably greater suffering than a clean Halal kill. And given the state of knowledge over a thousand years ago, when these requirements were founded, I cannot in all conscience condemn it. And having read the scientific literature examining both sides, I find it hard even to insist on pre-stunning, but on balance I do support it.

So, the Halal requirements for cleanliness and the humane treatment of animals are precisely the same as those which underlie our legal requirements today. If Halal practices could be refined in the light of new scientific evidence, then I have no doubt that they would allow carefully prescribed pre-stunning, and place less emphasis on magic spells. Halal practices were introduced for precisely the same reasons we want humane slaughter today, and dogmatically holding to the letter of scripture, while denying improvements in the light of new knowledge, which support its spirit and clear purpose, can be neither just nor holy.

According to the BBC, 90% of UK Halal meat is from animals which have been pre-stunned, so they conform to legal requirements. There is no legal prohibition on magic spells, since we all know they do nothing so cannot possibly do us harm. Therefore, I would be perfectly content to buy and eat Halal meat from animals treated according to secular law, including careful pre-stunning, with or without the magic spells and added Halal requirements, and whether labelled as such or not.

The final issue troubles me as a secular Humanist: compare two circumstances.

1) The legal, ritual slaughter of animals by a devoutly religious person, who believes he is being watched over by an invisible master who requires the animal to be treated with respect.

2) The slaughter by the hand of the kind of person I can imagine applying for and doing the job of slaughterman in a secular abattoir, without independent oversight.

In the light of this comparison, and knowledge of the requirements for Halal slaughter and secular slaughter, I do have a hard time condemning Halal practice.

This is an emotive subject, but I do have one request. Before condemning my heresy, please do read up on the details and argue from a position of knowledge of the subject. Then please feel free to weigh in.

The Atheist's Tale

Who has the burden of proof for an extraordinary claim?  Those who make the claim or those who challenge the claim?

At first, it is quite reasonable to give benefit of the doubt to a man who makes a claim, such as "I have a unicorn in my garden". After all, we have not searched his garden and have no proof that he has no unicorn, and it seems reasonable to take the word of a man who has not been shown to lie. So reasonably, we take his word at face value and allow that he may indeed have a unicorn in his garden.

When we visit his home, we are interested to see the unicorn, but when asked the man says he has a big garden and the unicorn isn't around the house at the moment, but it is there nonetheless. We're disappointed, of course, but we have no reason to disbelieve him.

Later the man makes a moral judgement about our behaviour, such as "it is wrong to eat wheat on a Wednesday", and when asked why this is so, the man replies that his unicorn told him so. We are irritated by such judgement, and surprised that not only this man claims to have a unicorn, but that it can speak also. So we ask to see this unicorn and ask why it is wrong to eat wheat on a Wednesday. We search the garden with the man and find no unicorn, but have no proof that none exists. When challenged to produce the unicorn, the man now claims that the unicorn is invisible, and is in all parts of the garden at the same time.

Now the man's claim is looking extraordinary for a number of reasons:
1. We have never seen a unicorn, and they are popularly believed to be fictional;
2. We have never heard an animal speak, and most people accept that only humans speak;
3. The man changed his story to suit his needs as we enquired further about his talking unicorn;
4. We have never had experience of invisible animals, and invisibility has never been demonstrated; and
5. The concept of something being everywhere at once appears contradictory.

So we conclude that on the balance of probability, the man's claim is bogus and put the onus on him to prove the existence of his unicorn.

We tell the man not to be so silly and judgemental about our wheat eating habits, and go about our business, trying to avoid aggravating someone who appears not to have a firm grasp on reality.

Then we find that the man is a teacher is our children's school and is telling them that his unicorn is real, that they should not eat wheat on Wednesdays and other rules about how to live their lives which he cannot substantiate, other than by claiming his invisible unicorn told him so, and the children must believe him.

So now we are angry that our children are being indoctrinated and ask the school to stop him. When we find that the school governors are unicorn believers too, that none of them can prove the existence of unicorns either, but fully support the indoctrination of our children, we are outraged. We speak to local politicians and media, and mount a campaign to stop this silliness. But then the government, many members of whom turn out to believe in pixies or leprechauns, equally without foundation, object that we are trying to restrict people's right to believe what they choose to believe, and criticise us for being arrogant and intolerant.

We hold our heads in our hands, wondering how these people can be so deluded, and how we can have our children taught math, English and science, without all this mumbo-jumbo. We realise that it is we who are in the minority, and the world deluded.

What should we do?