Biased media coverage was raised by MP Mike Freer who noted the widespread coverage of animal abuse uncovered in secret footage from a halal abattoir in North Yorkshire but the minimal reporting on later footage taken from a secular abattoir which used stunning and in which animal abuse was evident.
Freer quoted emails from the public such as ““I don’t want my meat touched by a dirty man in a beard” and “I don’t want Muslim meat”— whatever Muslim meat is.””
The issue of religious slaughter has, in the media particularly, been largely discussed in reference to halal meat despite Jewish methods completely prohibiting stunning and the majority of halal meat slaughtered in the UK is pre-stunned.
The bias is indicative of the degree of anti-Muslim bias in the British media noted by Professor Stuart Weir who, in the foreword to Peter Oborne’s pamphlet Muslims Under Siege, wrote “writers in the broadsheet press and elsewhere [willingly] indulge themselves in blatantly anti-Islamic rhetoric and argument that would, as they argue, not be tolerated if it were directed against Jews, say, or gay people.” [MEND] Read more
