Animal Slaughter

Here is an e-mail I've just sent to my MP. After reading it, you may wish to send a similar e-mail to your own and maybe sign this petition. I don't expect a response, I never do get one whenever religious rights and exemptions to our laws are involved.

Dear Mr Soames,

Here is proof that animals have souls, are intelligent, feeling and are even capable of passing the "altruism" test.

These links prove that even donkeys come to the aid of another animal when under attack; cross species altruism. Washoe demonstrated a deep understanding and empathy when one of the keepers said that her baby had misscaried.
http://www.petproductmarketing.co.uk/content.php?sid=428
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_%28chimpanzee%29

Animals are deserving of a humane death.

Secondly, no religion has given any good reason why they should be given exemptions to the law of the land.

Thirdly, there are a number of pre-stunning methods. One delivers a shock that kills the animal. The second only scrambles the brain and if left alone, an animal will make a full recovery, mere seconds after such a stun; which is why an animal so stunned is acceptable to halal buchery, but still awakens to witness its own murder.

At the very least, Mr Soames, meat should be labelled as to whether it was concious when it died; simply stating whether it was halal slaughtered should be enough to denote which of the various stunning methods was used. An indicator of a single letter on a coloured square should be able to be large enough to be seen, no matter what the label.

At the best, any meat that is halal acceptable, should be banned from import without a special licence, or else restricted to being carried out by licenced abattoirs only for the specialist communities.

I find the practice that allows kosher slaughter for the community that requires it, to be acceptable. To find halal meat in our generic food chain as if it was the norm, is unacceptable and must be stopped. You may wish to examine the FAWC advice given to government in 2004 and mentioned in this BBC article.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/2977086.stm

Yours sincerely,

Miss Michelle Knight.