Following the Government’s publication of the Results of the 2024 FSA Slaughter Sector Survey in England and Wales in November 2024, both the RSPCA and the National Secular Society used the results to publicly attack the Shechita method.
On Wednesday 4th December, Shimon Cohen, Campaign Director of Shechita UK, stated:
“The statements made by the RSPCA and the NSS are provocative and pejorative. As the FSA Survey 2024 reports, Shechita has indeed increased by 2%. Yet this rise is negligible in terms of raw numbers, increasing from 0.2% in 2022 to 0.3% in 2024, a tiny proportion of the 19 plus million animals slaughtered. Furthermore, this increase ensures the continued provision of Kosher meat, an essential for Jewish life in this country.
The Shechita method conforms to the EU definition of stunning, as an “intentionally induced process which causes loss of consciousness and sensibility without pain, including any process resulting in instantaneous death”. It is certainly no crueller or less effective than the mechanical stunning methods mentioned in the FSA Survey, including Jarvis box, free bullet, captive stun, high concentration CO2 and other gas mixtures, electronarcosis to the head, and electrical water bath methods, all of which, it might be added, were not originally introduced into factories for any animal welfare concerns. These methods, adored by the RSPCA and others, are not better than Shechita and are not without a significant margin of error, inflicting horrific pain on animals.
One might have thought that an organisation self-proclaiming and dedicated to “preventing cruelty” would focus its attention on the numerous failures of these mechanical stunning processes as well as the oft-reported abuses at abattoirs. That the RSPCA and others chooses to target on the Kosher method, so small in number and so vital for Jewish communities, raises more questions.”