IF Muslims and Jews refuse to allow animals to be stunned before they are killed, the Government should ban their traditional methods of slaughter, the president-elect of the British Veterinary Association (BVA) said on Thursday.

John Blackwell, a farm vet, said that the Danish government's recent ban on halal and kosher slaughtering (News, 28 February) was done "purely for animal welfare reasons, which is right. We may have to go down that route."

In an interview with The Times, Mr Blackwell expressed his hope that Jews and Muslims would accept that animals should be stunned unconcious before they are killed: "It would be more productive if we can have a meeting of minds, rather than to say, 'You can't do it'. [Otherwise] a ban may be the only way to move the issue forward."

Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, debated the issue with Mr Blackwell on Today on Radio 4 on Thursday morning.

"Animals that are killed for the general market and the Jewish and Muslim markets are killed in exactly the same way," he said. "A large animal has its throat cut and that renders the animal insensible to pain and unconcious. The Jewish method is designed to bring that process about instantly . . . [it] focuses on the most humane way of bringing an animal's death about."

He suggested that Denmark was a "very poor and unhelpful example. . . What you had was a political act designed for populist reasons because of prejudice aginst Muslims. My worry is that Mr Blackwell is going down that road of speaking in ways that inflame prejudice."

Evidence on slaughter and pain is disputed. A statement of principles issued by the BVA, the Humane Slaughter Association, and the RSPCA states: "Scientific evidence demonstrates that slaughter without pre-stunning compromises animal welfare," citing a 2009 New Zealand study. It recommends that, if the Government does not insist on stunning pre-slaughter, is should at least label food to enable consumers to make informed choices.

In a debate on welfare at slaughter in the House of Lords in January, Lord Winston, Professor of Science and Society at Imperial College London, who is Jewish, argued that the Jewish method was "much more humane" than stunning.

In a briefing prepared for that debate, Shuja Shafi, deputy secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, also said that the Islamic method of slaughter was "very humane". The Muslim community was "keen to ensure that the most up-to-date principles of good animal welfare are incorporated into their operations, and to further strengthen animal-welfare efforts without compromising the religious requirement". The Council supported the labelling of halal food and the right of consumers to know how their meat was slaughtered; but "singling out meat prepared by the religious method is discriminatory when only un-stunned meat will be labeled".

In a letter to the Church Times this week, representatives of the Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals defend the decision of the Danish government.

"As Christians, we need to speak not only out of the heritage that we share with other faiths, but also from the unique perspective of the teaching of Jesus," they write. "When faced with the choice between relieving suffering or adhering to religious practice, Jesus made it clear that the former took preference over the latter. . . Should we not, therefore, take the same approach?"

The Revd Keith Trivasse, Assistant Curate of Bury, Roch Valley, warned in another letter about "an underlying current of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic thought. . . Christians shouuld be acting with the Jewish and Muslim communities to uphold the right to freedom of religion."