To absolutely loathe the increase in smear campaigns against businesses because of the halal meat debate?

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Well it’s not really a debate, is it? You either don’t care, or you’re absolutely seething because your meat may or may not be halal. But irrespectively of what you think about this, AIBU to think that people ‘outing’ businesses on social media about what meat they use and encouraging hundreds of people to smear them not just in posts but reviews to tank their ratings is just crazy?

Hundreds of people commenting ‘I’ve just left them a bad review on google’ because a (British owned baked potato) business extended their trading hours to their Muslim customers? People who have never bought anything from them in their life, probably geographically will never go there. Actively trying to sabotage a business because you think you’re what - some sort of activist?

And don’t get me started on the posts where people reach out to these poor customer service reps in supermarkets to ask them if the meat they sell is halal because of this mad narrative that ‘80% of supermarket meat is halal’ - where has this nonsense come from?!?! 😂 People screenshotting and commenting about how ‘Clare from Lidl’ is avoiding the question when she probably doesn’t have a scooby and the answer probably isn’t a straight yes or no either!

Madness. Utter madness. People treating this like it’s a full time job.

It’s the same types

Bothered about Halal, not bothered about Kosher, Battery Eggs, the appalling way lots of farmed meat is reared

Bothered about VAWG when it’s a Muslim/Brown perpetrator, not bothered when it’s a White one

It’s because they are Racist.

It’s ridiculous, all this because they offered some dates and water to break fast

The debate isn’t the reason for my post

Exactly!

I wouldn’t buy kosher meat either if it was labelled as such.

Yes, agree entirely.

I've seen two business in the mainstream press, that due to selling non halal meat, are being attacked and have protesters outside etc.

People are losing sight that people have different opinions. No one is forcing them to eat there.

This thread is exactly why there isn’t a real life debate about it because people are being labelled as racist and a “type” For actively choosing to avoid halal and kosher.

Its simply because halal meat is becoming more mainstream, and sold in non-muslim venues as wel,, whereas kosher meat is hard/ impossible to get outside of the very small number of Jewish communities and businesses in the UK (Jews are just half a percent of the population).

So, no its not that funny.

And you might want to spend some time looking into the appalling racism Jews are facing in this country, including being subject to terrorist murders and planned mass murders, for being Jewish - before you write posts suggesting Jews aren't subject to racism. Jewish burial grounds have been being desecrated in the UK for decades. Despite being a tiny population, the proportion of hate crimes against Jews is highest of any minority group in the UK when you put that in the context of the proportion of the population they are in the UK.

Quite.

I avoid both, for welfare reasons. I also buy free range eggs and look for higher welfare meat in general. I’m not eschewing battery eggs for racist reasons, any more than I’m avoiding halal and kosher for racist reasons.

Agree.

The posts I have seen are then signed off with ‘restore Britain’. It’s very clear it’s not a healthy debate - it’s driven by the likes of Rupert.

This thread isn’t about that! The debate isn’t a debate because there are people out there that think like this. That they have to defend whether they’re racist or not because someone points out that smearing businesses is driven by racism. Nobody out in the real world who possesses the emotional intelligence to have an actual debate resorts to those actions. They’re able to hold a conversation and appreciate that people have different points of view. Note how I’ve purposely left out my opinion on the wider debate - because it’s not part of this discussion.

Agree that this is just another proxy for Islamophobia. If people really cared about animal welfare, then the focus would be much wider.

It’s not wider because you get called a racist for saying it

Same, I try to be mindful about what I buy and so buy free range whenever I can, with both meat and eggs.

No, you get called a racist because you only care about animal welfare when it comes to halal slaughter.

I’m veggie.

i don’t think individual businesses should be smeared but equally I think halal and kosher methods of slaughter are cruel and if people knew what they involved and knew they were eating animals killed in that way they would be upset.

I’m not racist. I don’t want to eat animals that have had their throat cut then been hung upside down to bleed out while still conscious.

It takes 12 minutes for a cow to bleed out while trussed up by its hooves.

There are videos on YouTube from Halal slaughterhouses.

many slaughterhouses now are Muslim owned including the huge Two Sisters one in the North of England.

That makes no sense.

Why would you get called racist for making a much wider argument about animal welfare standards? What does factory farming have to do with race?

You obviously failed to understand my point. What I was saying is that, if people were actually motivated by animal welfare concerns and not just using these as a proxy for Islamophobia, then they would not be arguing against halal meat, they would be arguing against all meat which didn't meet the very highest standards of animal welfare. And they would be much less worried about labelling meat "halal" and more interested in bringing in some kind of general animal welfare rating system which would take into account not only the method of slaughter but the way in which the animals are treated more broadly.

Most halal meat is stunned in any case, but tbh, that's beside the point. People are just using this issue because they feel it is a legitimate way of expressing their hate.

You explicitly mention halal slaughter, which allows the animals to be stunned, but not kosher, which doesn’t. Why?

This has been explained so many times. If you want to eat kosher, you have to actively seek it out. If you go to your local take away, chances are it will be halal and you do not have the choice.

But why does that matter?

If you're eating meat from your local takeaway, then regardless of whether it's halal or not, it's extremely likely to be relatively cheap meat which has been produced with very poor standards of animal welfare, so if animal welfare was actually your concern, then surely you wouldn't eat it anyway? So what's the issue?

It’s not about whether you are eating it, or not, it’s about whether the practice itself is cruel. If you care about animal welfare you will condemn both, rather than ignore one because you don’t see it very much.

Ah yes, because it’s a takeover and we’re all days away from sharia law.

Cheap slaughter is cheap slaughter, and cruel no matter what. The only reason people have an issue is because it’s a Muslim practice.