§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw)In June 2003, the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) published its report and recommendations on the welfare of farmed animals at 101WS slaughter. It was a valuable and comprehensive report and I am grateful to the council for the work they put into it.
The report contains 94 recommendations for improvements in the welfare of animals at the time of slaughter or killing and the Government are prepared to accept, or partially accept, the majority of them. But the Government also accept that FAWC's recommendation to ban the slaughter of animals without prior stunning on welfare grounds has been contentious for the Jewish and Muslim communities.
The Government also recognise that such a ban would be likely to result in kosher and halal meat being imported with no overall improvement in animal welfare. We also think that there is a strong possibility that a legal challenge to a ban on slaughter without prior stunning would succeed on the grounds that the practice is protected under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights.
While the Government therefore propose to reject the FAWC recommendation to ban slaughter without prior stunning, we recommend that cattle slaughtered by having their throats cut should receive an immediate post-cut stun because of the time it takes cattle to lose consciousness This should be progressed on a voluntary basis.
In addition to the issues identified by FAWC, the consultation provides an ideal opportunity for a debate on whether meat from animals slaughtered without prior stunning for the kosher and halal markets should be labelled voluntarily. Some meat that has been slaughtered without the animal previously being stunned finds its way onto the ordinary meat market. At present, such meat is not required to be labelled to indicate the method of slaughter.
We are today issuing our response to the FAWC report for consultation on all aspects including those identified in this statement.