to not know if this offensive?

[Catnary]

Colleague in canteen queue today, I comment that the food looks tasty. She makes a face, points to the label and says “Yeah but look, I’m not eating that!”

Label says “Halal beef casserole”.

I say “but it’s just a different way of slaughtering the cow”

”Yeah I know, that’s what I mean, it’s SO cruel. I can’t have that on my conscience.”

This was all very loud and other people overheard. Neither colleague nor I are Muslim but many other colleagues are. I felt very uncomfortable, didn’t engage, and ordered the beef.

Is this just no different to a vegetarian declaring loudly that they couldn’t possibly be so cruel as to eat meat, or is it a slur on Muslims? It felt inappropriate, especially at work.

Also just read that there are strict rules for how animals are raised for halal meat. They are to live a "pure and natural" life, roaming freely and eating a vegetarian diet (as they would naturally). They can't be given antibiotics and growth hormones. They must be treated humanely.
So all those who are saying how cruel it is may well be tucking in to the factory farmed meat - animals who were cooped up in small enclosures, pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics because they were so sick throughout their lives.
As long as the halal animals are stunned before being killed (and most are in the UK) then I think halal meat sounds a lot LESS cruel than our regular meat!

Rather than being over-run with people, you mean?

Anyway, it wouldn't. Humankind controls the breeding of livestock. If no-one ate them, they wouldn't be bred.

Prior to white people colonising North America, the buffalo filled the plains for miles - huge hers with thousands of animals. This didn't upset the ecological balance. It was part of it.

It is humankind's interference in the delicate balance of nature and the prey/predator equilibrium which causes problems.

There was a problem though. People were being called all sorts of things very commonly in the workplace, being made the butt of jokes and treated as less capable. Just because it wasn’t said to you doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I do agree with you in one way though, people should say what they mean instead of parroting what they think the right answer is, that’s how you work out who to avoid due to their abhorrent views. Must be time for you to get back to putting your head in the sand.

It’s not offensive, its her opinion and one she is allowed to have. I won’t eat halal meat because of how it’s slaughtered. British farming standards stun the animal before its death.

halal slits the animals throat and lets it beed out in agony. …

Crikey

Have you been to any non- Halal slaughterhouses? I have, they are all horrific.

I think all animals we proiduce for food suffer greatly during their lives and deaths so those non-halal meat eaters should probably get off their high horses.

I agree @SallyWD - and I also think that the huge slaughterhouses that we now have lend themselves to cruelty (perhaps not deliberate, but hidden cameras show that there is a lot of gratuitous brutality in slaughterhouses). Perhaps propel who have to harden themselves to this horrible job can only carry it out by convincing themselves that animals have no feelings - physical or emotional. It is an extermination camp mentality.

As Isaac Bashevis Singer said - "For the animals, it is eternal Treblinka".

When the racists get called out for their racism, to them it feels like oppression.

The colleague was almost certainly racist. The only element of doubt would be if they were genuinely misinformed and mistakenly believed that halal = cruel and not halal = humane. That's clearly not true, but there is a very slight chance that the colleague was merely misinformed and did not therefore have any ill intentions in respect of racism or cultural insensitivity.

But them's your choices. Racist or Stupid. Take your pick.

(Oh, and also - the colleague is clearly not in a minority, either. This thread is evidence enough that both racism and stupidity are fairly commonplace and widespread)

No. It's been said repeatedly on this thread that 95% of all halal meat is from animals that are stunned before slaughter. Exactly as all the other animals are slaughtered. Halal meat from mainstream suppliers will be in this category.

@RoseslnTheHospital Fair enough. Still will avoid jusr in case.

This colleague is allowed her opinion and other people are allowed to find that it's based on racist stupidity and find that unnecessary in the workplace. Or perhaps just ignorance leading to ignorant racism as opposed to deliberately hateful racism.

I admit I didn't realise this, but now that I do thanks to a previous poster, I don't regard Halal meat as being more cruelly produced than non-Halal.

Are people not allowed an opinion?

I agree with this.

The anti-halal view is often just Islamaphobia dressed up as having

high food standards.

Unless this person is a vegan or only eats high welfare animal products then they're a hypocrite.

Of course they are @Lost123454 , as long as it's the right one, it seems . . .

I don't think it's offensive.....no different from a veggie saying "no I'm not eating that it's got meat in it"

I’m offended that you’d be offended by her having her non-offensive (and completely correct!) opinion.
Life isn’t about being competitively offended - perhaps she was offended that the meat was halal?

The problem with consuming animal products of any type is the huge amount of cognitive dissonance required by 'animal lovers' to participate in the cruelty and exploitation it requires.
Many people cope with this by comparing down.
The non halal eater likes to consider themselves less cruel than the halal eater, the vegetarian less cruel than the meat eater....when in truth unless a person is vegan in diet and lifestyle, they have simply chosen the place on the cruelty continuem they can live with (or be in denial about) so no one is in a position to be judging anyone else.

This. I agree.

Are you aware that 95% of animals halal slaughtered in the UK are slaughtered to the british standards?

It's an incorrect opinion though. As has been repeatedly stated!

The other big divide, apart from the "is this thread about animal welfare or is it about racism" one, is almost more of a grammatical one.

There are people asking and opining on whether particular actions or words are, in themselves, offensive. There can be no offence given unless there is someone else who takes offence. Offensiveness is a subjective measure of upset or hurt as experienced by an observer, recipient or third party - it bears absolutely no relationship to the intent or motives or morality of the person making the comment or taking the action.

Intent is only relevant if those actions require an exploration of legal culpability for giving offence, and having done so unknowingly or unintentionally will be treated more leniently than, say, persistent and vindictive harassment. But this exploration does not negate or mitigate or qualify the offense that is taken. It is entirely up to the offended party to describe, explain, quantify and complain about how those actions made them feel. A second strand of the legal perspective is to ask whether it was reasonable for the offended party to be as upset as they were, and that too provides a potential defence against any criminal charges. But the words and actions remain offensive, regardless whether they are also criminal. Not all instances of racism are unlawful. But they remain instances of racism nonetheless.

So for all you racists out there - no one care what your intentions are. It's not always about you. You are, and continue to be, recognised as racists. Own it. If it bothers you that people think this about you, change the way you talk and act. If it doesn't ... well that sort of proves our point, doesn't it?

Even if we were to pretend that 95% were stunned beforehand, that leaves 5% unstunned…
I stand by Halal being cruel. Further to that, I don’t require my meat to have a religious based end. Be it an Islamic one, a Christian one, a Hindu one etc etc. and neither do the majority of the country. The importance is to be as humane as possible.
I stand completely by it being cruel (even if only 5% were killed unstunned).

The latest Food Standards Agency figures show an estimate of 24.5 million animals are slaughtered without pre-stunning in 2022:

22 million meat chickens (2.3% of total slaughtered)

2.5 million sheep (23% of total slaughtered)

20 thousand cattle (1% of total slaughtered)

Also just read that there are strict rules for how animals are raised for halal meat. They are to live a "pure and natural" life, roaming freely and eating a vegetarian diet (as they would naturally). They can't be given antibiotics and growth hormones. They must be treated humanely.

That's really interesting @Sally090807 , and would certainly make me rethink my attitude towards buying halal meat. Do you have a link?