A row over sausages has a school community sizzling amid competing claims of bigotry and animal cruelty.
What was supposed to be a welcome-back barbecue for students at Coburg West Primary School has turned into a debate over the Islamic halal method of preparing meat.
Members of the school’s Parents and Friends Association believed they were being inclusive when they ordered halal-only sausages for last month’s barbie.
But some parents thought it was political correctness gone mad to offer only halal meat.
Parent Diane Rees said yesterday that she was outraged when told by the PFA that “we have to buy halal because we have some Muslim children in the school”.
“I said to the principal, ‘I think you’re discriminating against the majority of the school and appeasing the minority by only serving halal,’ ” she said. “It’s not fair on my children that they can’t eat at the school.”
Ms Rees said she wasn’t anti-Muslim - her concern was over the way animals were killed under the halal method, which involves a knife cut to the jugular veins and carotid arteries in the neck.
“They take two long minutes to die and I think that’s bloody cruel,” she said.
But Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Ikebal Patel said research showed that, done properly, halal was a quick and humane slaughter of animals.
“I think they are using the issue of some halal sausages at a barbecue, for God’s sake, to bring out their own xenophobic bigotry,” he said.
“It was very thoughtful of the parents and friends association to try to cater for Muslims. I think they (the critics) need to get real and get a life on this one.”
School principal David Kilmartin, who has been in the job for only a month, said halal-only barbecues were not school policy and the PFA had been told to provide a choice of meat in the future.
“I don’t think it was done with any malice. I’m assuming there would have been requests from Muslim families to have halal meat,” he said.