Extracts from report stage of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill - Dec 6

Baroness Deech (CB):...It is not necessary for present purposes to go into the nature of religious animal slaughter in the form of Shechita or its Muslim equivalent. There is scientific evidence on both sides of the debate about the humanity of this. In fact, when one reads about the terrible cruelty, referred to earlier in this debate, that we routinely inflict deliberately or by accident—in the electrocution of chickens, the killing of pigs, the decapitation of rabbits, the suffocation of fish, the boiling alive of lobsters, et cetera, which we will get to—we really have nothing to be proud of in all our practices of killing animals...

Lord Etherton (CB):...In fact, certainly in relation to religious slaughter of animals, the Government’s policy is to permit such slaughter. Jews and Muslims are exempt from the scope of domestic regulations concerning the stunning of animals, though I should add—so that there is no doubt about the matter—that the organisation with oversight of Jewish religious slaughter, Shechita UK, maintains that Shechita conforms with the EU definition of stunning, as supported by scientific evidence...