What did lobsters ever do to you?

With my previous aim having failed rather completely, I am determined to write at least something, at least sometimes. I now have a regular 9-5, so I really can't say I don't have the time. As aforementioned job is in science publishing, I also cannot say I lack the inclination.

In light of this I'll start with something simple but very close to my heart: animal welfare. More specifically, its manipulation by people with less-than-acceptable agendas.

To make this a little clearer I shall explain what I mean with the help of an anecdote. I recently graduated vet school, where I didn't study to become a vet, but I did have an interest in veterinary medicine and was surrounded by hundreds of students who were studying for entry into that noble profession. An interest in animal welfare was therefore a given for almost all attendees, and it manifested in some interesting ways.

At this point I need to explain a little more about the demographic of your average English veterinary school. The entry requirements are as academically challenging as one would expect; generally demanding 3 As at A Level in the sciences, plus work experience (paid or unpaid) in veterinary surgeries catering to both pets and agriculture, as well as in more general animal centres (farms, stables, kennels - even pet grooming businesses count). Some institutions also require a high score in a biomedical admissions test which measures logic and critical thinking, general understanding of science and problem solving, and includes a very abstract scientific essay which demonstrates a skill I can't recall. You then go through one or several interviews, which, combined with the other admission requirements, establish whether a prospective student has the necessary intelligence, dedication, awareness of the industry and understanding of the role of a vet on a day-to-day basis.

As a result of this, the people likely to get in are very often privately-educated and from a rural background (knowing local farmers is immensely helpful in gaining animal husbandry experience). They are determined, ambitious (many have dreamed of being a vet since their younger schooldays) and outspoken when it comes to matters that concern them, naturally including animal welfare.

They are also overwhelmingly white, and few have any significant understanding of - or desire to understand - non-English cultures.

So what's my point? Over the past few years, namely in the decade that has followed the attacks of 9/11, Islam has come under intense scrutiny. For people concerned with animal welfare, the natural area of concern is the practice of Halal slaughter.

Halal is the term for that which is permissible under Islamic law (Sharia), and the practice of slaughter is Dhabihah. Not being Muslim, I can't say I'm in a position to go into any great detail on the hows and whys of Islamic animal slaughter, but what I do know is that it involves laying the animal down, and cutting the throat with a very sharp, non-serrated blade, aiming to cut all of the major vessels (carotid arteries and jugular veins) but leave the spinal cord intact. The aim is for the animal to die by rapid loss of blood, most notably from the brain, which, when performed correctly, happens in seconds. ECG and EEG monitoring of animals at the moment of slaughter suggests the blood is lost from the brain sufficiently quickly as to cause brain death before the animal becomes aware of their pain.

Carried out perfectly, therefore, this method of slaughter appears to be relatively humane ("relatively" refers to a comparison with the western method of slaughter, which involves stunning the animal prior to cutting the throat).

Of course, it is not a perfect system and therefore not always carried out in such a clean and considered manner. It take considerable skill to do well, and everyone has off-days. For this reason, animal welfare charities, and an increasing number of Islamic groups, recommend pre-stunning the animals. The downside of this from a Muslim perspective is the risk the animal dies from the stun rather than fatal bleeding, which would leave the carcass "unclean" and unsuitable for consumption.

Tying it all together, a couple of years ago a couple of campaigns were doing the rounds on Facebook (you know the type: "we, an arbitrary number of people demand that some action be taken on an abstract cause, and we demand it now, and if we don't get it we shall leave angry posts on this page"). One was to boycott Lush (the bath stuff shop) in protest at their support of the hunt saboteurs, the other was an anti-Halal page. Significant numbers of people I knew at uni joined both.

Why? Not because they don't like the anarchy of the saboteurs, and not because they seriously object to a lack of pre-stunning. They did it because they do like hunting, and they don't like "animal cruelty", specifically that practiced by Muslims. Were these ardent campaigners racist? Not necessarily. Were they prejudiced, hypocritical and lazy? Most definitely.

Aside from the irony of thinking a slice across the throat is less humane than being chased to exhaustion over the course of hours and then literally ripped apart by dogs with considerably blunter instruments at their disposal, this neatly illustrates a point I'd like to make about our attitude to animal welfare, and life, in general.

Some basic facts: the majority (I've read it as high as 90%) of Halal meat is pre-stunned (admittedly, as far as I am aware there is no requirement for Halal abbatoirs to state whether they stun or not, and no requirement for vendors to label whether their meat is Halal. This I disagree with, because, in the same way many people avoid battery-farmed eggs, so we should have the right to avoid non-stunned meat. But that's a different point, really). No (0%) of Kosher meat is pre-stunned. None of it. Not a bit. And yet where is the anti-Kosher Facebook campaign? Where is the anti-lobster-boiling campaign (yes, they've been demonstrated to feel pain, or at least they give off chemicals and brain activity which is associated with pain in other species)? Why is it we have people who are pro-hunting and anti-Halal, but not - in the non-Muslim world - the other way round?

Islam teaches respect for animals. Halal is not about causing suffering to animals. In fact not so long ago, it probably would have been one of the most humane ways for an animal to end their days - the western world has a pretty bad track record on that one. In fact it still does, if the recent secret abattoir footage taken by Ardent Animal Welfare Charity is anything to go by. While I disagree with some arguments that Halal is more humane than pre-stunning (because that's an entirely silly point), I fail to see what possible reason people could have for being so uniquely against it.

Except that's a lie. I see exactly why. Prejudice. Hippocracy. Laziness. In a word: scapegoating. This goes beyond just animal welfare, although that is my overriding point. I won't even conclude the points I've been making; you're an intelligent person, you can put two and two together.

So I'll go one bigger:

We live in a world where we blame what we don't understand. That's human nature, and understandable, and has gone on as long as we have. However, this suspicious world is becoming lazier: we have more access to information, but we've stopped using it as much. We are largely past the age in which most people knew nothing, and some people worked bloody hard to learn everything. Now everyone knows a little - often gleaned, chinese whispers-style, from friends, the internet and newspapers. It's a vortex of half-truths, mumbled arguments and thinly-veiled bias. It's causing trouble.

We know Halal is bad (because Muslims fly into buildings). We know hunting is good (because we've always done it). We know Kosher is good (because Jews went through the Holocaust). We know rich people get paid lots because they're clever and we know unemployed people are scroungers. We know disabled people are liars and protesters are parasites.

What we know is largely bollocks, and it's time we started trying to piece together facts, rather than demanding extreme solutions to problems we don't even attempt to understand.

The humane slaughter of animals is a good idea. Leave politics and religion out of it. Leave the Countryside Alliance and PETA and the BNP out of it, and let's start looking after our lobsters a bit better.

Ramble 1.0

It's late, I'm babysitting because I'm skint, and I've just discovered the joys of coffee; time to start a blog!

I may as well explain how I want this to work: I'm pretty into science communication (in essentials, science journalism in this country is awful, but if you're reading this you probably already know that), so I've been meaning to start a blog for ages, I just had no idea what to write about. It then occurred to me I always revise by bothering random laymen to my life with facts about whatever module I'm currently studying. So I've decided to transfer this general bothering to the great anonymous mass of the internet, to give the much-hassled ear drums of my familiars a decent break.

If you're reading this, merci, I apologise for the fact this is unlikely to be interesting, it isn't really for entertainment, more for personal study.

Update coming soon. Hopefully.