Nadine Dorries is criticising Rupert Lowe over a 17-year-old Labrador that was elderly, incontinent, struggling to walk, in pain and at the end of its life, being taken to a familiar place and humanely dispatched by an experienced farm worker.
Dorries, however, spent years as a Conservative MP and oversaw the massive expansion of halal slaughter in Britain.
In 2011, under the Torys, around 50% of sheep and goats were slaughtered by halal methods. By 2018, it was 71% of sheep. By 2024, 82% of sheep were being slaughtered under religious exemptions, including 28% killed without stunning beforehand.
Those Conservative governments, the very governments Nadine Dorries served in and repeatedly stood for election to support, refused to end the religious exemption, refused to introduce mandatory labelling so consumers could make informed choices, and repeatedly chose consultation over action.
So spare us the lectures about humane killing.
Farmers have put down elderly, suffering animals for generations. A single well-placed shot causes immediate unconsciousness and death. The dog was not dragged through a bloated soaked abattoir, restrained, or left bleeding out, dying slowly in excruciating pain - It spent its final moments in familiar surroundings with people it knew.
If Nadine Dorries believes animal welfare is such an important issue, perhaps she should explain why she remained part of governments that allowed religious slaughter to expand so dramatically, why those governments protected the exemption, and why they never gave the British public the transparent labelling needed to make their own choices.
The reality is that a beloved old dog being given a quick death at the end of a long life is not the scandal here.
Either she didnt care as a Tory MP about animal welfare, or she's a coward. Either way, millions of animals were and continue to be, today, brutally slaughtered because the government she stood on a plinth to promote, allowed brutal non stun slaughter to flourish.
He thought a stranger cocking a shotgun in the face of his loyal 17yo Labrador, was a more ‘humane’ way to end his days than to take him to the vet.
How can anyone vote for this man?
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