Henry Dimbleby, who runs the Leon restaurant chain, has a good piece at the Telegraph countering the hysteria about halal meat.

The majority of the meat we are talking about here is intensively farmed chicken. Both halal and standard birds are raised in exactly the same way and most of the harm inflicted on them will be done so over the course of their miserable short lives. The extent to which halal slaughter adds to this grief is debatable. As with traditional slaughter, it can be done well and it can be done badly.

The standard chickens are either gassed in pens or hung upside down by their feet and dipped in a bath of electrocuted water – a plastic bar being placed on their chest to keep them calm. Halal chickens have their throats cut when they are alive – albeit in many cases they are stunned in a water bath first.

So are the complaints from the National Secular Society to do with animal welfare or religion? The answer is probably in its name.