There seem to be a lot of people on this thread that don’t think non religious people have the right to care about religious practices they don’t believe in. Which is odd as a lack of religion or religious belief is as protected under the UK equality act as religion or religious belief is. In fact it’s in the same Article.
There are plenty of people in the UK, who are non believers, and wish their children to be exempted from, for example, assemblies that include the Lord’s Prayer, or Religious Study lessons. And that is their right, by law, in the UK. It’s perfectly reasonable to think that it is important for some people to not have anything to do with any religious practice at all.
There also seems to be a lot of people who think because the meat trade is an inherently cruel and inhumane one, that the method of slaughter shouldn’t concern anyone. I find that odd as well. The practice of ‘sticking’ a stunned, unconscious animal is quite obviously less traumatic than that of sticking a conscious one that only reaches unconsciousness after enough blood has been lost.
However, it is true that this subject is raised often, in MN and elsewhere, and it is pretty much always Halal that is used as the example. The reality is (as others have mentioned) that if welfare really is the concern, then Kosher practices are more problematic. But for some reason they do not seem to provoke the same ‘concerns’ and so it is also a reasonable position to take that there may very well be an agenda for that.
All food should be correctly labelled, for all sorts of reasons, and actually that seems to be the direction of traffic in the UK at the moment. I’m unsure why labelling, and therefore, choice should be considered controversial. If it’s because of a fear of other agendas, then it’s those that should be tackled, where they arise.