One of his recent Facebook posts on the subject said:
In a self-respecting Britain, halal slaughter would be outlawed. It doesn’t matter if the communities affected are too large, or it’s too difficult. We treat our animals with care and respect. We don’t slit their throats, and allow them to bleed to death in the most cruel and unnecessary pain. It needs to be banned – all non-stun slaughter needs to be banned.
He wants UK humanitarian standards, involving stunning before slaughter, to be imposed on halal and kosher meat.
Lowe, MP for the impoverished Norfolk constituency of Great Yarmouth, is also in favour of chucking all illegal immigrants out of the UK. In April this year, he co-sponsored an Early Day Motion in Parliament headed “Mass Deportation of illegal immigrants”, which expressed “grave concern at the continued presence of over one million illegal migrants in the United Kingdom” and called for “the Government to implement a comprehensive national strategy to identify, detain, and deport all individuals found to be residing in the United Kingdom illegally”.
So a cynic might believe the anti-halal campaign is in fact a clever ruse to deter uncompromising Muslims from coming to the UK. But even if Lowe did not co-sponsor the EDM with that in mind, it is easy to suppose that a great many people who are disturbed by the economic and cultural effects of mass migration, from predominantly Muslim countries, might see it as a great deterrent. And a wonderful way to look pro-animal rather than racist.
There are two problems with this. The first one is that, according to all the reports I’ve read, upwards of 80% of halal meat in the UK – the sort you see in all supermarkets now – is stunned before being killed. The likelihood is that more traditional unstunned throat-slitting is carried out privately in the poorer Muslim ghetto communities, where people tend to close ranks when nosy officialdom comes knocking at the door. Policing it would be extremely difficult.
The bigger problem I foresee, though, is that such a law could easily be co-opted to support the endless campaigns against shooting game in the UK. This matter was by no means settled by the recent vote by MPs against a ban on grouse shooting. That was not primarily about cruelty but about conservation....<<<Read More>>>...
