Animal welfare laws

We support a reduction of animal suffering resulting from human behaviour and see compassionate attitudes to animal suffering as a hallmark of a humane society.

Policy summary

Problem:
Animals are intelligent, feeling beings too, and often suffer as a result of human activity.

Consequences:
Animals are subjected to unnecessary pain and suffering. For example, animals used in religious slaughter, or animals killed in an unnecessarily painful manner such as without pre-stunning. This is unethical and unjust.

Our policy:
We endorse the principles and specific freedoms guaranteed within the World Organisation for Animal Health’s Five Freedoms for animals under human control. They recognise that other animals can suffer and find pleasure and that, as a result, we have responsibilities to them. We want to see these Freedoms implemented and protected in full in law or policy by governments across the UK and the world. We do not want any laws or regulations to accept religious beliefs as a justification for causing animal suffering that otherwise would not be permitted.

Recommendation:
We recommend that the Government implement in full the policies laid down by the World Organisation for Animal Health’s Five Freedoms. We also recommend that it ends exemptions in the law that allow for non-stunned slaughter, or, failing that, introduces mandatory labelling of meat produced through non-stunned slaughter.

Sometimes people think that because humanists are called humanists that we are unduly or narrowly concerned with the rights and welfare of human beings. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding: most humanists are strong supporters of animal welfare and recognise the necessity of sensible policy that acknowledges animal sentience and their capacity to suffer. Humanists are called humanists because, being humans, we try to make ethical decisions on the basis of our human capacity to reason, rather than looking to external sources for guidance about what is right and wrong (in other words, humanism contrasts with theism, rather than with some kind of ‘animalism’).

A Humanists UK poster summarising the Five Freedoms for Animals Under Human Control. Click to expand.

We endorse the World Organisation for Animal Health’s Five Freedoms for animals under human control, and urge their full implementation and protection in law or policy by governments across the UK and worldwide. While we do not seek to duplicate the efforts of specialist animal welfare organisations like the RSPCA or the British Veterinary Association.

One particular area where Humanists UK actively campaigns is on religious exemptions to animal welfare and farming laws. In the UK, these laws significantly restrict the rights of farm animals used in religious slaughter. For example, slaughtering animals without pre-stunning causes unnecessary pain and suffering to the animal. We have long campaigned for an end to the exemption from the law mandating pre-stunning for religious groups providing shechita (kosher) and halal meat. Short of that, we want to see rules introduced requiring all meat slaughtered without pre-stunning to be labelled as such.

Non-stunned slaughter in depth

Animal welfare legislation in the UK mandates that all animals must be stunned so that they are insensible to pain before the lethal cut is made during the slaughtering process. This is considered by most veterinary and animal welfare organisations to be the most humane method of slaughter.

However, there is an exception to this law for animals slaughtered according to halal and shechita (kosher) methods. Under such methods, the animal’s throat is severed using a sharp blade and it then dies slowly of blood loss, while being fully conscious.

In the UK, in practice around 88% of animals undergoing halal slaughter are actually stunned as certain stun methods are accepted by a number of halal certification bodies for certain species. However, all animals slaughtered for kosher meat are unstunned.

According to the RSPCA, in 2024 26.7 million chickens, 3.1 million sheep, and 35,000 cattle were slaughtered without pre-stunning. Government figures in 2024 showed that 29% of sheep were slaughtered without stunning in 2023.

This may be unlawful. The relevant regulation provides that the shechita method may be used ‘for the food of Jews’ and the non-stunned halal method may be used ‘for the food of Muslims’. But Muslims and Jews combined make up 6.4% of the population, in the 2021 Census. So how can it be that 29% of sheep were slaughtered without stunning? The answer is plainly that much non-stunned sheep is not ending up as food for Jewish or Muslim people. This point has never been tested in court.

We are not alone in campaigning against non-stunned slaughter: the Farm Animal Welfare Committee, the Government committee responsible for advising the British governments on farm animal welfare, has long recommended that farm animals should be stunned before slaughter. This mirrors the view of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), the British Veterinary Association (BVA), and the Humane Slaughter Association (HSA). They all recognise that the balance of evidence shows that not stunning animals prior to slaughter causes additional distress.

Non-stun slaughter is unlawful in several European countries. Slovenia introduced an animal welfare-focused ban in 2012, followed by Denmark in 2014, and by most of Belgium in 2019 through laws passed in Flanders and Wallonia. In 2020, the European Court of Justice upheld the Belgian bans, finding they were grounded in scientific evidence about animal suffering and based on a sincere concern for animal welfare. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights likewise ruled that Belgium’s approach did not violate the right to freedom of religion or belief.

If animals are not to be stunned prior to slaughter, then we think they should at least be labelled on the basis of whether or not they were stunned. This would enable consumers to make an informed choice.

What we’re doing on non-stunned slaughter

In 2021, the Conservative government consulted on labelling for animal welfare, including non-stunned meat. We responded, and the following year the government reported that over 97% of respondents backed introducing labelling. It committed to consulting in more detail ‘on proposals to expand and reform mandatory welfare labelling’.

It ran that consultation in 2024, with the response being published by the new government in June 2025. This time, the consultation showed that 100% of respondents had urged the Government to adopt meat labelling, with 99% feeling this principle should extend beyond the retail sector as well, with ‘no impact’ on religious groups or other protected characteristics. But again, the Government confirmed it would ‘consider the potential role of production labelling reform’ further – now as part of a wider promise to introduce ‘the most ambitious programme for animal welfare in a generation’.

The matter was debated in Parliament that month, with MPs of all stripes backing mandatory labelling. The Government said it would address the matter through its animal welfare strategy, which would be published later in 2025.

Appendix: Past work on non-stunned slaughter

In 2021, we backed an amendment by Chris Loder MP that aimed to reduce the number of animals slaughtered without stunning. However, the amendment was not taken up and the Government Bill in question was also ultimately abandoned.
In 2018, we responded to a consultation by Lancashire County Council on a proposal to remove meat from its school meals that were being slaughtered without being pre-stunned. The Council subsequently voted in favour of this change.
In 2018, we called upon members and supporters to respond to a consultation on the draft Animal Welfare (Sentencing and Recognition of Sentience) Bill demanding an end to non-stunned slaughter.
In 2017, we called upon the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board to introduce a labelling system indicating whether an animal was pre-stunned or not on all of their approved sheep meat products.