Britain First's Jayda Fransen 'Invades' Halal Slaughterhouse

Funny how they don't campaign on any other animal welfare issues.
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Britain First has 'invaded' a halal slaughterhouse, accusing both workers and customers of serving Satan and funding terrorism.

In a video of the confrontation posted to Facebook, deputy leader Jayda Fransen can be seen launching a venomous tirade against those inside.

She screams: "Don't you realise you're in Great Britain? In Britain, why do we have halal slaughterhouses?

"Why are you offering these animal up to Allah, a fake god, Satan. Do any of you have any morals?"

Fransen then turns her attention to customers queuing for meat.

She adds: "Look at all these people here buying halal-slaughtered meat. You are in Great Britain.

"Halal slaughter is barbaric. How can you live with yourselves? This is a Christian country and the Bible says no Christian should eat meat offered to a false god.

"My grandfather fought for this country and he didn't do that for you people to turn it into little Pakistan by you people carrying out these barbaric practices for a disgusting, vile ideology."

One of the burly men accompanying Fransen then accuses the butchers of funding terrorism organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

The far-right group - which has never campaigned for any other animal welfare issue - then attempted to access the area of the complex where animals are slaughtered. 

Leader Paul Golding who appears to be filming, then calls the butchers "a disgrace".

As his selective passion for animal welfare takes hold he adds: "The way they butcher them, it's disgusting."

Halal means “permissible” in Arabic and meat prepared in this manner is labelled as such in the UK.

In recent years it has been a hot topic amongst far-right groups who use it as another way to target Muslims, claiming the practice of not stunning animals is cruel.

Also conveniently ignored is the Jewish practice of kashrut which also forbids the stunning of an animal before slaughter.

In fact, many of the UK slaughterhouses targeted by anti-halal outrage also supply kosher stores.

This selective application of apparent moral standards leads many to conclude halal meat simply provides an easy target for groups itching for any excuse to attack Muslims.

In a blog for HuffPost UK in 2014, Dr Chris Allen, lecturer in social policy at the University of Birmingham wrote:

Here's a controversial statement: the recent anti-halal hysteria has nothing to do with the welfare of animals. It's just good old-fashioned Islamophobia.

This is not to say that some people don't have sincere concerns about the way in which animals are slaughtered: they do.

But these are not the people now jumping on the anti-halal bandwagon. Instead, those jumping on the bandwagon are doing so because they seem happy to eat any old dead animal as long as it's not a dead 'Muslim' animal.

Animals are killed, they writhe about. To quote Morrissey, meat is murder.

And there's the hypocrisy. None of those jumping on the bandwagon are concerned about the morality of 'murdering' animals or their welfare. They are bothered they've been told they're eating Muslim meat. Evidence of this can be found by having a quick look at the hashtag #boycottpizzaexpress. Not many concerned for the animals are there?

In fact if they were, then all of those on the anti-halal bandwagon would probably be concerned with more than just the last few seconds of the animal's life.

And that's because as Animal Aid state, whether halal slaughtered or not, the type of chicken to end up on a pizza will likely have been industrially hatched before being moved to a giant barn known as a 'broiler shed' in which 40-50,000 chickens live at any given time. Fed with drugs to ensure un-naturally rapid growth, the chickens are likely to suffer from leg deformities that can prevent them from reaching food and water alongside the routine development of heart, lung, liver and kidney problems. Despite being fed antibiotics to keep them alive, around 50 million chickens die each year in such conditions before reaching the abattoir.