Britain’s Labour Party backs separate labeling for kosher, halal meat

Britain’s Labour Party announces its support for separate labeling for meat from animals slaughtered without stunning in keeping with Jewish and Muslim traditions.

Jewish groups in the United Kingdom and beyond in Europe oppose the proposed measure, which appeared in Labour’s Animal Welfare Plan published by the opposition party earlier this week, because they deem it discriminatory.

The mandate states it will seek “mandatory labeling of meat, both domestic and imported. This would include details on country of origin, method of production and method of slaughter (stun or non-stun.)”

Shechita UK, an organization representing communal interests in the matter, in the past has called labeling meat as “not stunned” discriminatory because “it suggests that shechita-slaughtered meat comes from a non-humane process, and there will be no label to indicate how non-kosher meat is slaughtered or if their stunning methods have failed (as they so frequently do).”

— JTA