I have said before that the European Union, for all its faults, had the one benefit of imposing world class consumer protections across a trading bloc one-and-a-half times as populous the United States. In particular, food produced or bought in the EU has the toughest safety and ethical regulations applied anywhere in the world. It was this attitude which led to moves in the European Parliament to require labelling of all food with halal or kosher content. Muslim and Jewish consumers could have confidence that the food they buy complied with their religious beliefs, whilst others could make an informed choice about their food.
A perfectly moderate, reasonable policy, you might say. Nobody was imposing their choices on other people. Yet the legislation ran into huge opposition from the halal food industry, and was defeated. We are still not entitled to know how the animals we eat are killed. Why?
Even in a world where factory farming is fast becoming the norm, the suffering caused to animals by halal slaughter is eye-watering. Animals are left to bleed to death after their throats are cut open. They can remain conscious for minutes after cutting, experiencing agony worse than can be imagined. Muslims should be allowed to buy food prepared this way: that is their choice. Yet, I as a non-muslim, feel equally entitled to the choice to eat only humanely slaughtered meat. Unfortunately, I don’t have that choice.
Halal food is everywhere in the supply chain. Investigations show that school meals, prison food, takeaway food and ready meals from all major supermarkets often contain halal meat. That’s because halal meat doesn’t come at a premium to other meat, so is not traded separately. However, because the meat retailers don’t record the religious compliance of each batch of meat, they don’t even get the benefit of halal certification. Nobody’s happy, because they don’t know what they’re buying.
David Cameron said yesterday that there would be no restrictions on halal meat while he was Prime Minister. He is right to defend the religious rights of muslim consumers. Nevertheless, I don’t see why a requirement to label halal and kosher food should contradict that pledge. That’s the minimum that’s needed. Then we should have a national debate over a requirement that all animals are stunned before slaughter, regardless of religion. There are plenty of figures in the halal food industry who are certain that stunning animals before the cutting is entirely compatible with religious requirements. There must be no question of singling out a particular religious group, but consumers have a right to make their own, informed choices.
The Political Idealist 
I agree, it is two separate issues between whether Halal and Kosher methods of butchery are civilised (I’m not sat factory farming is either) and whether the population at large has a right to know how the animal which they are eating was killed.
Many places now sell all their meat as Halal even in areas you might not expect it to be in say Fish and Chip shops because they see it as easier for those of us with no religious objections of how animals are slaughtered. However just as most of us want to know what is in our meat, what country it was farmed and slaughtered, we also want to know if we are eating food slaughtered in a way that for the majority of us, is not the norm.
Personally I love meat but only eat it sparingly once a week or even less but I have no qualms about eating it. I do like it if at all possible to be reared in the most intensiveness way possible way and whilst I will happily eat Halal in foreign countries, I’d rather not in my own. I’d also like my purchases not to be used to finance this method of slaughter and for Halal meat to become the standard just because it makes life easier for people. If it is not labelled as such then mainstream consumers are likely to be seen as giving it tacit acceptance.
Yes, I’ve noticed that: everywhere from sandwich shops to chippies seems to be Halal certified.
You’re argument seems perfectly reasonable to me: we just want to know where our food comes from- and, as you rightly point out there is the matter of culture. We should expect high standards of animal welfare in this country, just as we’d comply with others’ standards abroad.
In my experience working on the meat industry in New Zealand (more than 15 years ago) the halal-killed sheep were electrically stunned and killed in exactly the same way as the rest of the animals. The only difference for the halal meat was that the slaughterman had to be a Muslim and gave a short prayer over each animal killed. At the time, that procedure was considered sufficient by the religious authorities in Iran (which was the main export market for halal meat at that time) who regularly sent delegations to inspect the slaughtering facilities. As far as I know, this has not changed since that time. So I guess that means that halal slaughtering does not necessarily involve the kind of cruelty you describe.
However, this doesn’t substantially change your main point about accurate food labelling, and protecting the rights of non-believers as well as believers, which I support.
Thanks for your point- it’s useful to have somebody speaking from experience. I agree that there is no ethical issue about halal slaughtering where the animal has been stunned beforehand. If an animal is going to be killed anyway and it is rendered absolutely unconscious, it doesn’t really matter how it is slaughtered.
What concerns me is that where I see halal products advertised in the UK (so admittedly I don’t know about the non-labelled halal products) I will often see phrases like “100% non-stunned guarantee”- so the lack of stunning must be seen by some consumers as a selling point. I just hope that this is not the same meat that is sold to the rest of us unlabelled.