Greens are supposed to always go with the evidence. However, this does not appear to apply to Wales Green Party (WGP) which has just voted at its party’s autumn conference in Cardiff to reverse its policy to end non-stun slaughter of farmed animals adopted only 2 years ago.
The scientific consensus and animal welfare experts overwhelmingly agree that the slaughter of animals by the cutting of the throat and oesophagus and letting the blood flow whilst the animal is alive causes unnecessary and significant suffering.
The Farm Animal Welfare Council, a government advisory body, recommends non-stun slaughter should be banned. Both the RSPCA and the British Veterinary Association support the ban.
The law in this country demands that animals be stunned before slaughter to render them unconscious and thus minimise their pain, suffering and distress.
As reported in the Guardian in 2017, 87% of halal meat in the UK was at the time actually stunned. In 1986, the Muslim World League declared that the pre-slaughter stunning is lawful when the weakest electric current renders an animal unconscious before slaughter. In addition, stunning has been declared as acceptable by a fatwa (with a unanimous verdict) of the Al-Azhar University of Cairo.
Alarmed by WGP’s change of policy in the name of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), campaign officer Dr Alejandro Sanchez from the National Secular Society said: ” We are dismayed to see a party with a long history of commitment to environmental and secularist principles turn its back on animal welfare to satisfy religious demands”.
The WGP has not only reversed its own green policy on animal welfare without any scientific evidence, but it would seem has also failed to conduct its own research into the very religious beliefs of the communities it seeks to not discriminate against.
This raises the question of whether the WGP’s top priority is actually to satisfy the demands of Identity Politics extremists who care little for animal cruelty or seek to engage in a meaningful dialogue with some of its Welsh religious minorities.
Spending time and precious resources at an annual conference on such policy is clearly yet another example of further distraction from the Green Party’s raison d’etre of combatting the ecological existential crises.
The Green Light 