@ Jom - But this is kind of the fundamental point.
UK law mandates that all animals are stunned prior to slaughter, using a captive bolt, electrical or gas stunning process - Except where religious sensibilities forbid it.Both the Jewish and Muslim communities claim this exemption. Certainly as far as the Muslim community is concerned, the issue centres around the stunning process and the notion that the stunning could cause the animal to die prior to being exsanguinated - such meat would be considered Haram - forbidden.
So both Shechita and Halal slaughter methods do not include stunning the animal prior to cutting its throat. Again, at least as far as the Muslim community is concerned, there are differences of religious opinion over whether stunning is acceptable - some scholars think it is OK, other scholars most definitely do not. On balance though, you can expect that an animal slaughtered in the UK by either the Halal or Schechita method is not stunned prior to slaughter.
And this really bothers me - because abbatoirs are increasingly slaughtering all animals via a Halal method to save on costs and time - but only those animals slaughtered in this fashion destined for muslim outlets will automatically be labelled as such. Meat destined for normal large scale butchers outlets, such as the supermarkets, may well take meat slaughtered via the Halal method - but not labelled as such. This deprives those consumers who want the animals who provide their meat to be stunned first from making an active choice and is wrong.
I want the animals that provide my meat to be stunned first, as being the most humane way of killing the animals that provide my food - short of becoming a vegetarian, which I have no wish to do, this is the very least we should do, along with ensuring that rearing conditions are also as humane as possible.
This religious nonsense that deems meat somehow impure because it may have died just prior to being bled invades our standards of humane treatment of animals, and is wrong. This is an example of a religious freedom trampling all over secular logic and rationality, and I think should be resisted.