Norman Ralph

Just found this snippet on the NSS website.

A Muslim smallholder in Kent has been fined £3,000 and told to pay £3,799 costs at Bromley Magistrates’ Court after he slaughtered sheep using halal methods but without pre-stunning the animals.
Sheep

Zeki Ismail’s small farm in Keston was raided last December after he bought six sheep at a market in Ashford, Kent. Bromley Council’s food safety officers, meat hygiene vets and animal health inspectors all feared Mr Ismail might kill the livestock for halal meat without following safety rules. By the time they arrived at the farm with police, three sheep had already been killed and the meat shared around the family.

But Mr Ismail claimed that he was completely unaware he was breaking strict farming laws. Mr Ismail slit the throats of his sheep without stunning them first – breaking a UK law which states animals which are not stunned must only be killed at a licensed slaughterhouse.

Mr Ismail admitted failing to stun the sheep before killing them, religiously slaughtering the animals outside of a slaughterhouse, supplying food containing specified risk material for human consumption, and failing to tell the local authority that six sheep had moved onto his smallholding.

London’s Halal Food Authority says animals have to be fed as normal and given water prior to slaughter and one animal must not see the other being killed. The authority also says the “knife should be four times the size of the neck and razor sharp, and as far as possible the slaughterer and the animal should face Qibla or Mecca.”
The organisation does not ban animals from being stunned before their throats are slit, but the UK’s Halal Monitoring Committee insists that slaughter must take place without stunning the animals.

This is an interesting development following my article on this very subject not so long ago that was published in Secular Future.