The discovery of an ‘illegal slaughterhouse’ at Mosta on Wednesday rang a bell. The way the animal carcasses were hung and the fact that the three men who were apprehended included two ‘foreigners’ pointed in one direction: Halal.

The breakfast boiled egg is anything but the quantum of solace it looks like- Mark-Anthony Falzon

Whether that was indeed the case, I honestly don’t know. I’ve seen ‘foreigners’ do things like building and sunbathing but I’m not aware of halal construction or ritual suntans. Then again, it may not really matter. The point is that the news set off something of a discussion on the virtues or otherwise of halal.

I don’t find that at all surprising. Practices like ritual slaughter and the veiling of women have become a staple of both popular and academic discourse in various European contexts. They are usually linked to ‘multiculturalism’ and such broad notions. I’m interested in some of the arguments made not least by the legions of online commentators following Wednesday’s find.

The first that comes to mind is the one from hypocrisy. There seems to be a fair bit of that here, truth be told. Modern abattoirs are not ‘pain free’, they’re just hidden away. Contemporary societies have increasingly pushed animal slaughter, and husbandry generally, away from everyday experience. The maxim seems to be ‘out of sight out of mind’ – and heart, one might add.

The breakfast boiled egg, for example, is anything but the quantum of solace it looks like. I was reading the other day that male chicks unfortunate enough to hatch into the egg-laying dynasty are immediately gassed or ‘macerated’. That’s thrown alive into a grinder and shredded to bits. A product website tells me it’s all ‘approved as a humane method for disposing of chicks’.

Which is fine by us, as long as we can’t see it. The little glimpses we do get from time to time can be traumatic. I know people who eat meat but who will do anything to avoid driving through Marsa in the early hours, just in case they should come across a truckload of cows or pigs being driven to the abattoir.

I once happened to be on a Gozo ferry that was also transporting thousands of chickens to Malta, presumably for slaughter. I overheard many people say how sorry they felt for the birds. No doubt the same bleeding hearts went on to be warmed by the smell of a good roast that same evening.

There was uproar when the streets of Albert Town turned red with blood seeping out of the abattoir some months ago. The point was not about slipping on the way to work (the streets in Marsa are regularly flooded with water), it was about the horror of blood. And yet we know that behind those walls is a daily routine that has more blood in it than Polanski’s Macbeth.

There are two things to say here. First, that these are not necessarily examples of ‘hypocrisy’. That’s because to move something out of view is itself a moral act. Put differently, there’s such a thing as a morality of visibility.

We know and accept for example that operating theatres are not terribly appetising places, but we would still object to televised amputations or to a surgeon who took a cheerful stroll through hospital their gloves dripping with blood.

That’s not because we’re hypocrites. Rather, it’s because there is a morality attached to what should and shouldn’t be seen in public.

I’m very sure that this is the main root of our problems with ritual slaughter. Because it often happens in the context of congregations (such as the Muslim occasion of Eid al-Adha, or goat sacrifice at Hindu temples), it presents us with a morality of viewing which jars with our own. In that sense there is nothing odd about timesofmalta.com warning us that ‘viewer discretion’ was advisable for Wednesday’s story.

The second point is trickier. Let’s assume that, hypocrisy or not, our distaste for ritual slaughter is the result of double standards on our part. Does that therefore mean it’s all simply a case of killing animals in different ways that are equally painful, some of which are visible and others not?

No. That’s because there’s a deep gulf separating two rationales here (no ‘clash of civilisations’ please, we don’t need to go that far). Whether or not our standards are actually met, we believe that animals should be killed in as swift and painless a way as possible.

Ritual slaughter on the other hand is based on the belief that they should be killed as God ordained.

One of the reasons why it’s easy not to see that gulf is that believers themselves will often come up with explanations from ‘science’ and ‘rationality’.

They might say that slitting an animal’s throat is actually the best way, ‘if properly performed’ (rather circular that one, a bit like the chick macerator), of assuring a swift death. Or that cows are sacred because it historically made sense to preserve an animal on which people depended so much for their survival. (Makes the Swiss look distinctly iconoclastic.)

No matter, none of this can shake off religion. Let’s say a method were invented by which animals could be slaughtered in a totally painless way that actually left them completely unperturbed about the whole matter. In other words, not a scintilla of cruelty or pain or trauma in sight. Where would that leave ritual slaughter?

Exactly where it is now, quite probably. That’s because ritual slaughter is, surprise surprise, inextricably linked to religion and broader rationales.

Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea to link our revulsion to issues of multiculturalism after all.

mafalzon@hotmail.com