I apologise to the former Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), because I have been corrected. I can only say that some of it may indeed go into the food chain, but not in the way that was anticipated—that is, the whole carcass of an animal. I think we are dancing on the head of a pin if we are saying that only some might go into the food chain.
What is humane slaughter? Some people say that slaughter is humane if an animal is protected from unavoidable excitement, pain or suffering, and that that requires the animal to be restrained and stunned, rendering it insensitive to pain before it is allowed to bleed to death. I do not accept that. I too have been to an abattoir, and I have also been around cattle when they have been killed in other places. When cattle enter any kind of contraption, including the back of a lorry, their stress levels increase.
In preparation for this debate, I read Jon Henley’s January 2009 article in The Guardian about the European pig industry. Some animals experience a lifetime of distress and suffering. The article documented pigs being kept on slatted concrete floors; pregnant sows being kept in cages so small that they could not move; piglets being castrated without pain relief; and tails routinely being docked to prevent animals from attacking each other. The food that enters the UK food chain from the EU is never discussed, which is peculiar. Muslim and Jewish people do not eat pork, but no one ever discusses such issues—we seem to be focusing on
the same issues time and again. We should certainly spend time on other issues, such as the trimming of hens’ beaks; the mechanical mis-stunning of animals; the fly-grazing of horses; puppy farming; the culling of chicks on the basis of sex; and the cultivation of endangered turtle meat in places such as the Cayman Islands. None of that is ever covered.
It is worth highlighting that the petition has come about with great haste, in contrast with the British Veterinary Association petition, which has taken almost a year to come to fruition. I would like the new BVA chairman to stop fanning the hysteria around this issue and look at what veterinarians are doing to ensure animal welfare in slaughter houses.
I will not talk about shechita in particular, because it has already been covered, but I want to make a point about why some of the methods we have discussed have come about. The whole motivation in the large-scale factory abattoirs is to speed up the process and prevent the animal from thrashing around at the point of slaughter. That is why stunning occurs. Animal welfare organisations claim to have adopted the idea of stunning in an effort to raise levels of animal welfare, but the evidence in support of the animal welfare benefits is inconclusive. Mechanical methods frequently go wrong, leaving the animal in great, prolonged distress.
The last time we debated this issue, I mentioned the Food Standards Agency statistics on mis-stuns, which showed—and the Minister agreed—that an unrealistically low number of mis-stuns had been reported in the UK. In 2011, only six cattle were officially reported as having been mis-stunned. Following my questions, the Minister conceded that the statistics are not complete and may represent only a fraction of the actual number, and that the FSA will have to endeavour to improve its reporting methods.
I oppose stunning on the basis that mis-stuns cause animals more pain and distress and that it does not improve animal welfare. I am uneasy about the idea of ending non-stun slaughter coming forward so soon after the previous debate. I defend people’s right to eat meat and I defend my right not to eat meat; I also defend my constituents’ right to eat meat slaughtered in the way that they want it to be. Some people have said that these methods of slaughter are alien practices that are not part of British culture and not something we do in Britain. That starts to produce a divide between some groups and the so-called British public, and I am greatly concerned about that.
On the back of the Copenhagen and Paris attacks, many of my Jewish constituents worry that they are not wanted in this country. They, however, are more British than some of the people who have signed the e-petition; they, at the end of their synagogue services, always play “God Save the Queen” and sing along. We do not see that in other parts of society, more’s the pity. Similarly, when I visit my Muslim constituents at the mosque, they do not talk about the issues that some of the far right claim that they do; they are more concerned about parking outside the mosque on a Friday, so that they can get not only to the mosque but back to work afterwards.