Public outrage often focuses on visible ritual slaughter while ignoring the far larger, everyday suffering embedded in industrial meat and dairy systems. Milk, meat, and animal killing are deeply interconnected through supply chains that remain hidden from view. The deeper question is not about isolated acts but about the human tendency to avoid examining the consequences of habitual consumption and the assumptions that make such avoidance possible.
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Originally published in The Sunday Guardian on 3 aug '25.
Visible ritual slaughter sparks outrage while industrial animal suffering remains systematically ignored every single day
To name a killing is to make it arguable. The moment an act of slaughter is declared, given a date, a theology, a visible place in the calendar, it becomes available to scrutiny, to protest, to the seasonal cycle of debate. The ego is comfortable with this. What it cannot examine, it cannot threaten; and what it has named, it can examine indefinitely, returning each year to the same argument, feeling the motion of moral engagement without disturbing anything it has arranged never to look at. Every year, as Eid al-Adha approaches, the debate reappears: should the practice be restricted, is public sacrifice acceptable, are there hygiene concerns? The protests and defences line up on cue, and when the festival passes, the argument goes quiet for another twelve months. The animal that was slaughtered is forgotten; the position that was held is remembered.
