Judge Britain's abattoirs by the campaigns against shechita, and you might conclude that the Jewish method of slaughter is among the gravest animal welfare problem the country faces.
Two days at the Humane Slaughter Association's conference in Newcastle this week told a very different story.
I attended with my colleague Gavriel Cohn and Professor Ari Zivotofsky of Bar-Ilan University. The agenda covered the killing of farmed insects and newborn piglets, the live shackling and gas stunning of poultry, the slaughter of fish in vast numbers, and the emergency culling of horses and other animals. Eminent speakers presented new research. We met old friends and familiar opponents, all of them courteous, whatever our disagreements.
I came away with a paradox. As a welfare issue, shechita deserves far less attention than it gets. As a subject of serious research, and as a test of how Britain treats its religious minorities, it deserves far more.
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