Greg Knight
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Non-stun Slaughter of Animals
Greg Knight Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered non-stun slaughter of animals.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this issue, which is of concern to me personally, as well as many of my constituents and the wider public. I thank the British Veterinary Association for campaigning on this issue and its guidance ahead of this debate. I declare that I am an honorary member of the BVA, for which there is no reward other than regular contact, which is available to all hon. Members. Many constituents have contacted me on this subject, including quite a few from the farming community.
Like many other people I am a consumer of meat and an animal lover, and I do not believe those two positions are mutually exclusive. A discussion of the non-stun slaughter of animals must be based not on strength of feeling, but on evidence. Having considered some of the evidence, I feel that there is a strong case to be made for the banning of non-stun slaughter. The BVA believes
“that slaughter without pre-stunning unnecessarily compromises animal welfare and that animals should be stunned before slaughter.”
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the situation could be vastly improved in the short term by changing our labelling laws and requiring products to be labelled to show whether stunning has taken place? Does he further agree that one benefit of leaving the EU is regaining control of our food-labelling laws?
Mr Robertson
I agree with my right hon. Friend on both of those points. I will come on to say more about the former point; I suspect that I will be called out of order if I go too far down the latter.