Britain’s Jews: Don’t blame us for ban on bangers

A ban on bangers in British public school lunches is focusing some unwanted attention on the UK’s Jewish community.

Across the country, principals have been deciding to drop pork products from school lunch menus to cater to students who do not eat them for cultural or religious reasons, according to a report this past Sunday in The Telegraph. This has led some to erroneously believe that the push to get rid of the pork is coming from the Jewish community, which its board of deputies maintains is not the case.

Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, told The Times of Israel by phone from London that the ban is, for the most part, a non-story that right-leaning publications like the Telegraph and the Daily Mail have “picked up on in this [political] climate.”

“There has been no request from the Jewish community that pork be removed from public school lunches,” Benjamin asserted.

Still, one district in Haringey, in north London, issued best practice advice to its schools to “ban all pork products in order to cater for the needs of staff and pupils who are not permitted contact with these for religious reasons.” However, the directive did not specify what percentage of a school’s enrollment needed to object to pork before it should remove it from its lunch menu. The Telegraph listed a number of other school districts in various cities throughout the country in which anywhere from just a few to almost all schools have put a hold on the ham.

Objections to this gustatory change have come from agricultural lobbies, as well as from some Conservative MPs. “It is disappointing that schools cannot be sufficiently organized to give children a choice of meat. Sausages and roast pork are staples of a British diet and children enjoy eating them,” said Stewart Houston, the chief executive of the National Pig Association, which represents commercial producers of pork products. “If products can be labeled with warnings that they contain nuts, and vegetarian dishes can be made and kept separate from meat dishes, I don’t see why the same can’t apply to pork,” he continued.

‘If products can be labeled with warnings that they contain nuts and vegetarian dishes can be made and kept separate from meat dishes, I don’t see why the same can’t apply to pork’

Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, West Yorkshire, echoed similar sentiments when he stated, “Whilst I very much agree that pupils should be able to choose not to have pork, I believe it is totally wrong for schools to in effect force all pupils to abide by the religious beliefs of some by denying them the opportunity to choose to have pork,” he said.

The Daily Mail picked up the story, adding that “the decision has been criticized by MPs who have said the ban will cause unnecessary resentment among pupils and religious leaders who said they never asked for a ban in the first place.”

According to Benjamin, the BOD chief executive, this is more or less what has happened.

Sixty percent of Britain’s Jewish students attend Jewish day schools, and the forty percent who do attend mainstream public schools have never had a problem with the lunches. “Those who eat everything eat what is offered in the schools, those who keep kosher style use the utensils and crockery at the school and make appropriate food choices, and those who keep strictly kosher bring their own lunches from home,” he explained. “There’s the whole spectrum.”

With only 300,000 Jews in England’s total population of 70 million, it is clear that the move to ban pork is aimed more at accommodating the much larger Muslim population, which stands at about 2.8 million. “The Jewish community is probably not in anyone’s contemplation, because we’re not large and we’re not pushing for this,” Benjamin said.

“It’s really a case of overcompensating for anticipated needs,” Benjamin said. “It’s what people talk about as political correctness gone mad, of public bodies anticipating that offense will be taken by a certain group.”

‘It’s what people talk about as political correctness gone mad, of public bodies anticipating that offense will be taken by a certain group’

Benjamin told The Times he suspects this will all blow over. But the fact that the Jews have been thrown in with the Muslims in this incidence of misplaced and misguided worry does make him feel a bit uneasy.

“I don’t expect any major backlash,” the Jewish leader said. However it is not all together good to have “the spotlight on us when it is not of our choosing,” he said.

As Benjamin sees it, it’s a case of some do-gooders who have ended up shining unwelcome attention on the Jewish community in Britain.

“Their efforts definitely backfired,” he said.