Devout religious believers are generally given a fair amount of leeway in society when it comes to their ability to follow the dictates of their conscience and their religious obligations. They are not allowed to willfully ignore general laws, at least not usually; but in turn those laws are often framed in such a way as to provide space for religions to operate.
In some circumstances, however, people are denied any ability to follow religious obligations because society has decided that certain actions are just too extreme to tolerate. Usually religion and society progress together so that society is not seen banning anything that has not already been dropped from religion — thus, for example, while human sacrifices would not be tolerated, it's a moot issue because no religious groups are arguing that they should be allowed to do such a thing.
Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that human sacrifices would still be banned even if there were a religion that still required them because they are too morally abhorrent. This illustrates the principle that religions and religious beliefs cannot always be used as a basis for doing something that is otherwise rejected by society. Even the most devoutly held religious belief must sometimes take a back seat to general social norms.
With this in mind we can turn to a question which has a great deal more relevancy today than human sacrifices: the methods for the ritual slaughter of animals. Both Judaism and Islam require adherents to only eat meat that has been prepared in a specific manner and which has been taken from animals that have been killed in a specific way. For Muslims this is known as halal and for Jews it is known as kosher.
These methods of slaughter follow very ancient procedures which have been in place for hundreds and thousands of years. While there may have been nothing particularly remarkable about them during their earliest days, that is no longer true. The basic principle is that the animal be alive and conscious as it is bled to death; today, many regard these methods of slaughter as needlessly cruel, causing unnecessary suffering for the animals involved.
As a consequence, the British government considered banning such methods of killing. Dr. Judy MacArthur Clark, chairman of the Farm Animal Welfare Council which advises the British government, supported such a ban and said that "from the scientific evidence we've seen that these animals are actually suffering significantly."
Anyone else killing animals for food must take precautions to ensure that the animals do not suffer, which in principle means stunning them so that they are not conscious when they are killed. Jewish and Muslims groups are exempt — but is this exemption ethically justified?
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