England – Retailers in the UK will not be forced to label halal and kosher meat after a bill proposed by a member of the House of Commons was narrowly voted down. Philip Davies, a Conservative member of Parliament, wanted to make it compulsory for all such meat products to carry a label saying ‘Killed without stunning’ to stop consumers buying the meat “without their knowledge”, he said. In the debate, Davies argued that kosher and halal meat was being “forced upon” non-religious shoppers. However the bill was rejected after a first reading by 73 votes to 70.
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The Labor Party MP Gerald Kaufman spoke out against compulsory labelling, saying: “I am an Orthodox Jew and I was brought up in a household where only kosher meat was eaten. I do not believe for a moment that Philip Davies has the tiniest anti-Semitic feeling in him. However, large numbers of Jews would be very greatly distressed if what he proposes were to become law.”
How could meat, almost twice as expensive as the “stunned” alternatives, be “forced on non-religious” consumers?
Isn’t the price difference enough to keep people from buying kosher if they have no religious reasons for doing so?
As if stunning the cow is so much more humane. I wonder what the cows would say if they could talk. “Would you rather be stunned and hit in the head with a hammer or a hammer gun, or be kosher slaughtered. You know what the answer is but some people are such morons they “think” they know better than Torah. That’s the problem they “think”.
1. Why are so apologetic, we slaughter because that is what we were commanded to do, in order to eat meat, weather it is humane or not.
2. The traif animals bring sold as regular noon kosher meat, as opposed to being thrown out, subsidizes a large proportion of the kosher meat industry, which means they can be machmir at a very low cost