Judge Britain's abattoirs by the campaigns against shechita, and you might conclude that the Jewish method of slaughter is among the gravest animal welfare problem the country faces.
Two days at the Humane Slaughter Association's conference in Newcastle this week told a very different story.
I attended with my colleague Gavriel Cohn and Professor Ari Zivotofsky of Bar-Ilan University. The agenda covered the killing of farmed insects and newborn piglets, the live shackling and gas stunning of poultry, the slaughter of fish in vast numbers, and the emergency culling of horses and other animals. Eminent speakers presented new research. We met old friends and familiar opponents, all of them courteous, whatever our disagreements.
I came away with a paradox. As a welfare issue, shechita deserves far less attention than it gets. As a subject of serious research, and as a test of how Britain treats its religious minorities, it deserves far more.
Start with proportion. The Food Standards Agency's most recent survey covered a single week in 2024. It found that shechita accounted for 0.3 per cent of chickens, 0.5 per cent of sheep and 1.5 per cent of cattle slaughtered in England and Wales. Nearly 20 million animals were killed that week. Shechita was a sliver of the total.
Yet, it commands an extraordinary share of the argument. One sometimes suspects that, for some campaigners at least, the real objection is not to the treatment of the animal on four legs but to the person on two: his faith, his customs, his place in British society.
Meanwhile, questions affecting millions of animals go comparatively unasked. We heard about electrical water-bath stunning and the gassing of poultry, where birds may remain conscious for up to three minutes. Nine in ten pigs in the FSA survey were stunned (read suffocated) with high-concentration carbon dioxide. The Government itself now proposes to ban that method because of the pain and distress it causes.
Then there are newborn piglets. Manual blunt-force killing is not permitted as a routine method, and mechanical devices and emergency killing fall under separate rules. But what counts as an emergency, and how are the exceptions applied on the farm? In an industry of this scale, these are not marginal questions.
None of this means shechita should be pushed to the margins. There are two reasons why it must not be.
The first is science. At Newcastle, Dr Jacob Hascalovici, of Hackensack Meridian Health, New York presented new research challenging the tools and assumptions the scientific establishment brings to shechita. His work examines slaughter, consciousness and pain from outside the usual frame. It deserves careful engagement, not reflexive dismissal.
The second is democracy. Shechita UK has worked hard to secure a seat at the table with the HSA, Defra, scientists and vets. For the Jewish community, that presence is essential to the continuity of religious life. For Britain, it is a matter of principle. Religious minorities must be heard when their freedoms are at stake, not politely consulted after the decisions have been made.
It is with this in mind, having discussed and debated our corner with a whole range of stakeholders, that we are heading back down to London – leaving all with (kosher) food for thought.
Shimon Cohen, the chairman of Roath PR, is director of Shechita UK and serves as the lead advocate on religious freedoms for the Conference of European Rabbis
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