There’s nothing I love more than hearing some flamboyant, sartorially elegant Restorenik pontificate about their commitment to “humane slaughter”, whatever that means. After they’ve shovelled down a full English breakfast, the bacon and sausages of which likely emerged from a high-concentration CO₂ chamber, they take to X where they angrily affirm their opposition to kosher and halal killing mechanisms, claiming that these barbaric practices have no place in a civilised country.
An hour later, as they battle a lingering dyspepsia, they vituperate about the phantasmatic elites who despise white people and local rural communities which are denied their Country Sports, a rather splendid euphemism. Let it be said that despite these guys living here for a very long time, they obviously have no sense of English irony.
I’ve never quite got, mind you, how one can believe there is anything remotely humane about slaughtering and inevitably torturing an innocent, sentient creature, invariably cognisant of their own suffering and sepulchral fate. Maybe that’s just a problem for us vegans and animal rights’ campaigners. Maybe we’re just too absorbed in the science which tells us that animals experience a staggering degree of anguish and torment, just as we would, when separated from their parents, placed in spaceless battery cages, or when subsequently murdered in what is promiscuously described as a factory. Indeed, there’s an exciting conference this coming October of the Humane Slaughter Association. I wish I could be there. But all I could possibly say to attendees is that probably the only humane way of killing an animal is not to kill one in the first place. That said, I guess I would be a little outnumbered at that sort of gathering.
It is in that spirit that I would prefer our community to move towards some form of stunning before ritual slaughter, even if that would still leave us some distance from anything I could call humane (see above). And yet, I cannot but oppose the current campaign to ban kosher and halal meat production as the tone of the campaign is contaminated by a pernicious, xenophobic, and un-British nationalism which believes that there should be no space for otherness in our country. And without space for the other, that is the right to be different, there can be no space for all the other ideals we cherish.
This isn’t led by cuddly animal lovers committed to a democratic and pluralistic Britain. This isn’t the work of patriotic people looking to improve cohesion amongst communities. The sad truth is that the current campaign for animal welfare is Nick Griffin on Purim: well-disguised, even pleasant-looking, but just as malevolent. It has been hijacked, and is now spearheaded, by a group of swivel-eyed, conspiratorial, white nationalists who vibrate to an England free of anything remotely foreign. That is what makes this campaign not merely insincere, but actively poisonous.
This campaign to ban ritual slaughter is less a campaign of animal welfare and more a smokescreen for a sinister project to make Britain an impossible place in which to be anything other than white and Christian. Just see what they have to say. That seems to be their raison d’être. And this right-wing taqiyya, so to speak, is genius politicking on their part. I will give them that. They can’t necessarily win popular support with explicit conspiracies or Jew-hate and anti-Muslim racism, so why not dress it all up in the very in-vogue guise of animal welfare? This is something all decent people can unite behind. And, you know, it seems to be working.
What is more disturbing, however, is that there has been widespread silence from genuine animal rights activists who should be outraged. They have allowed their cause, our cause, to be dominated by all sorts of baleful mavericks who are in it for all the wrong reasons. We cannot continue like this. To do so would be to align ourselves with something utterly anathema to our conviction that all life is equal and deserving of dignity. Our opposition to speciesism cannot be achieved through an alliance, whether we admit to it or not, with racism. It would be a betrayal of our very soul.
Even worse, many of the leading left-wing groups and activists in the animal liberation movement are intoxicated by the anti-Israel mania that has taken root in so many comparable activist movements. In that sense, their silence was perhaps predictable. Whether or not they would be honest enough to admit it, many might be quietly pleased that a new alliance in this movement has been formed. It is not grounded in the sanctity of life, but in the idea, so popular with conspiracy theorists through the ages, that Jews are our misfortune. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
This, no doubt, makes it impossible for us Jewish vegetarians and vegans, who are driven by a profound concern for animal welfare, as a result of Jewish values and what is taught in Rabbinic literature, to have any kind of home in these groups. It seems we are given a choice: either you are pro-Palestine and are willing to distance yourself from anything remotely connected to Zionism, or you stay well away from us, and you become our enemy. From the growth of the Woke Left to the expansion of the Woke Right, we animal-loving Jews and others committed to secular and liberal democracy can find ourselves caught between rival forms of fanaticism. Too much of the discourse around the movement for animals now seems hostile to the liberal way of life we wish to defend. This, let us be frank, only does harm to the animals who have no voice and no justice.
I’ve just come from the Freedom Farm Sanctuary, which is the oldest and possibly the largest ethical animal sanctuary in Israel. Currently with an astonishing 400 animals (or residents, as they put it) in their charge, its mission is to rescue animals from certain death in the food industry and to educate audiences from every background about the dignity of all life. I spoke to the co-founder, Adit, who founded the sanctuary with her colleague near Netanya nearly ten years ago. She was emphatic that she opposes “all forms of slaughter”, but that “criticism of these practices should only come from a genuine concern for animal welfare and should never be used to fuel hate.” Indeed, she told me “I believe compassion for animals and compassion for people are deeply connected. When we expand our circle of compassion to include animals, we strengthen our ability to see and care for people from all communities and religions.” She concluded with the prophetic words of Leo Tolstoy, “As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.”
This is not an easy assertion for someone who has saved scores of animals from a cruel industry. But we need more vegans and animal-rights’ activists to have Adit’s moral courage and conviction. It is time we reclaim our belief in justice for all creatures and reject a politics that creates one rule for some and another rule for others. If this is what restoring Britain looks like, I want no part of it. For that matter, neither should anyone who believes in the sacred liberal mission that all life is deserving of kindness and respect.
In the meantime, if we are serious about ending animal suffering, then let us talk about reducing meat consumption, promoting vegan diets in our own communities, reforming egg and dairy production, and no longer testing on animals for human avarice. The current opposition to kosher and halal is a farce. And a thoroughly dangerous one at that.
Harry Saul Markham is the author of ‘The Melted Pot: Diversity, Antisemitism, and the Limits of Tolerance’
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