A Cherwell investigation into the origin of meat produce at Oxford has revealed that up to 17 colleges may have been serving exclusively halal meat to their students, without being aware of the fact.

A Freedom of Information request to the University showed that Field Fresh Farms, who supply many undergraduate colleges, including St Catherine’s and Brasenose, were providing meat products slaughtered using the halal method “as standard” up until June of last year.

The catering firm were unaware that the abattoir which supplied them with their meat had switched to killing all its animals using the Islamic method of slaughter.

Simon Warren, the General Manager of Field Fresh Farms, told Cherwell that the company had had problems with the Mutch Meat Abattoir in Witney. He said, “We had consistent issues with slaughter procedure at Mutch Meat.

“There were blood spots in the meat, which I understand from butchers means that the animals were distressed prior to being killed.”

This produce was then sold on to Oxford colleges, which means that it is almost certain to have been consumed in dining halls.

Halal dietary requirements in Islam include the prescribed method of ritual slaughter of livestock. The animal is killed by a swift, deep incision with a sharp knife across the neck, severing through the windpipe and jugular veins, but leaving the spinal cord intact. The animal then bleeds to death.

There is widespread debate over whether the halal method of slaughter causes undue suffering to animals. European animal welfare regulations currently require all farm animals to be stunned before they are killed, but religious methods of slaughter such as halal for Muslims or shechita for Jews (a similar process) are exempt.

The Farm Animals Welfare Council, a government committee, has recently researched slaughter methods. Its findings concluded that in halal slaughter, “such a massive injury results in very significant pain and distress” and recommended that “slaughter without pre-stunning is unacceptable and that the Government should repeal the current exemption.”

The news that students may have been consuming halal meat for months without knowing about it caused concern among some.
One second year Medicine student at Brasenose, one of the colleges supplied by Field Fresh Farms, said, “I don’t like the idea that we have been eating halal meat without knowing.

“I don’t object to it on principle because it’s part of the Muslim religion and that’s fair enough, but we should have been told so that we could make an informed choice. Some people might not want to eat halal meat for ethical reasons, and they should be given the option not to.”

Field Farm Fresh still supply Oxford colleges, but recently switched suppliers to a company which uses non-halal killing methods.

When asked whether they thought that consumers had a right to know whether the meat processed by Mutch Meat had been slaughtered in a non-traditional and possibly crueller manner, a spokesperson declined to comment.

James Bennett, Chair of the University’s Domestic Bursar Committee and Bursar at St Catherine’s, noted that Field Farm Fresh are just one of many catering companies used by the University. Since purchasing decisions are made at the discretion of individual colleges, it is very difficult to determine whether meat served in college dining halls not labelled as halal is still produced in this method.

Colin Dalton, of David John butchers in the Covered Market, said, “Non-halal meat is definitely more humane, because the animal is stunned before death and is therefore not afraid.

“We occasionally order in and sell halal meat when it is requested by a customer, but we would never sell it to people without telling them it was halal. People have the right to choose.

“We used to supply meat to all the colleges ourselves, but it’s all central now. It comes down to money, and I think making everything halal is a symptom of that.”

Cherwell understands that a number of large abattoirs in Britain have started killing all their livestock using halal methods in recent years, because it enables them to supply the Muslim market and save on the costs of using two different methods.

Not all students were upset by the news, however. Emma Ferguson, a second year Modern Languages student at St Catherine’s, said, “I think it’s a good thing; it doesn’t affect anyone negatively. I can’t think of any reason why anyone would mind.”

Alistair Harden, Vice-President of the Oxford University Animal Ethics Society, commented, “The issue of halal methods of slaughter is divisive, and there is no consensus on how much suffering it causes.

“However, as far as slaughter is concerned, there is simply no right answer from an ethical point of view.

“As practiced today, no method has humane treatment of the animal at heart, and modern stunning methods often go wrong and inflict unimaginable pain.”

Thousands of students attended further protests in London and Manchester against cuts to higher education and public spending on Saturday.

Sixteen people were arrested in Manchester and a further group detained in London as the government was accused of “betraying an entire generation.”

Students in Manchester marched alongside members of TUC (Trade Unions Congress) and Unite, in a protest which the police said had started out as “very good natured, very convivial.”

A breakaway group of roughly 150 protesters caused disturbances across the city centre, as students joined with trade union to voice their anger at the cuts.

A spokesperson for the Greater Manchester Police said a number were known to have armed themselves with chef’s knives and razor blades.

Neil Wain, Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, said, “It is clear this group were intent on getting into the city centre to incite violence and cause damage to people living and working in our city.”

The demonstration in London took place without any large-scale confrontations, although six people were detained by police. Students marched through Whitehall and Westminster, some joining the protests outside the Egyptian embassy afterwards, and some “still roaming around the West End” in the late afternoon.

Meanwhile, NUS president Aaron Porter was forced to pull out of a student fees rally after he was surrounded by demonstrators calling for his resignation.

Protesters shouted “Students, workers, hear our shout! We want Aaron Porter out!” and “Aaron Porter we know you, you’re a f****** Tory too!”

Birkbeck University and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) have already passed motions of no confidence in Aaron Porter, as students vocalise their doubts over his fitness to lead the student movement.

The NUS Vice-President, Shane Chowen, had earlier been pelted by missiles, including eggs and oranges, as he spoke at the event and was booed off stage.

An Oxford student who was present at the London protest said, “I found the day quite disappointing, quite tiring. We were much less of a collective force than before.”

Reflecting on a day of anti-government demonstrations, the Universities and Science Minister David Willetts said, “The Government respects the right of all citizens to engage in lawful and peaceful protest.

“No student will be asked to pay up-front costs, there will be more financial support for poorer students and those who go on to earn the highest incomes will make the largest contributions after they have graduated.”

The Oxford University Congregation will meet to debate undergraduate fees and funding in the Sheldonian Theatre on Tuesday of 4th Week.

The Congregation is an official body comprising senior members of the University and its staff. As such, students will not be allowed to attend the debate.

A member of the OEC (Oxford Education Campaign) said, “We have to get as much discussion and noise about this as possible out there. Whether we go down legitimate channels or use more disruptive measures, we have to enable genuine debate.

“It’s not just disruption for disruption’s sake.”

Yet another violent incident took place on Cowley Road this week, leaving a man with severe head injuries. The assault took place outside the Regal nightclub on Sunday night.

Police were called at 2.50am on Sunday 30th January to reports of an altercation and assault near the popular student venue.

The victim, a 32 year-old man, was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital with serious head injuries. Doctors later described his condition as stable.

A police cordon was set up the next morning at the junction of Southfield Road and Cowley Road, by the City Arms pub.

A 31 year-old man has been arrested in connection with the assault and has been released on conditional bail until 14 March.

The news comes less than a month after a mass street brawl on Cowley Road where police arrested five men for public order offences, and a spate of violence last October, when two people were stabbed on the Cowley Road in separate incidents.

Dan Withers, a New College student living on Cowley Road, said, “I’ve never seen anything untoward in Cowley, but it has its fair share of dodgy-looking characters. Though I can’t say it has ever stopped me stumbling home after a night out.

“Generally it’s fine. I’m more worried crossing Cowley Road”.

Oxford Council are currently processing a new regulation that will require venues which have late night licences to pay a levy that will pay for the extra policing needed.

However, the government has just put a restriction on how much the council can charge.

Councillor for St Clement’s Nuala Young told Cherwell that she had been lobbying the local police to change their rota system to have enough police on duty late at night and early in the morning.

She said, “We are concerned that many of the incidents have been connected with drug dealing, as with the young student who was stabbed in the early hours near the Bullingdon Road.

“Students really should steer clear of these dodgy and potentially violent dealers who are homing in on the potential for student clientele in our area.”

She added, “Generally we don’t think that Oxford University students are such crazy drinkers, however female students really need to beware of tanking up with drink before they go out and ending up so drunk that they don’t know what’s happening.”

Thames Valley Police said that they are still appealing for any witnesses of the attack at the weekend to come forward.

In addition to the spate of attacks in the Cowley Road area, the website police.uk, which shows detailed breakdowns of crime levels in specific areas, reveals a high number of violent incidents in other parts of the city.

The website shows ten instances of violent crime in the Magdalen roundabout area in December of last year, while Hythe Bridge Street and New Road record 18 and 17 incidents respectively.

The total number of violent crimes in the inner city for December stands at a high 93. The overall figure for all crime and anti-social behaviour comes in at 606.

However, the new website places Oxford behind many other cities in the crime stakes, with Cambridge tallying at 741 and nearby Reading at 787.

The gender make up of undergraduate subjects at Oxford continues to show how girls and boys favour certain subjects.

Women continue to dominate men in terms of numbers in English, Modern Languages and Experimental Psychology, while men outnumber women in most science subjects.

Despite continued government efforts to encourage women to study science and maths, females make up a mere 14% of physicists in the 2010 intake.

In 2009 there was just one female computer scientist admitted, out of 16 students.

Miranda Kent, the sole female physicist in first year at Lincoln College, said, “I’ve never counted more than 20 girls in the lecture hall. Me and some of the other girls sometimes play spot the attractive physicist. It doesn’t happen very often.”

However, she explained that there were positives to being a minority in a subject: “You never have to queue for the loo.”

The gender ratio of Maths tells a similar story. Men make up 70% of the 2009 and 2010 intakes, an increase of 4% on 2005. The success rate of male applicants was a staggering 6-8% higher than female ones.

A female tutor explained to Cherwell, “We look at candidates on their respective merit…It just happens that we generally have more male candidates of the highest calibre than female ones.”

She also said, “I believe that males overall are more attracted to or suited by the subject,” though adding that this was “a view my male colleagues do not subscribe to.”

Dr. Sirichai Chongchitnan, a Fellow in Applied Mathematics at Lincoln College, put the gender bias down to a lack of famous female role models, and “the old perception of maths and physics in school as ‘nerdy’ subjects for boys.”

Girls are very much the majority in English lectures, with 85 boys studying the subject compared to 139 girls in the 2010 intake.

Only 23% of first year Engineers are women. Matt Butterworth, a second year Engineer at LMH, commented, “If I could have it exactly how I wanted, I would definitely prefer a more even balance.”
One female Engineer in her third year told Cherwell that the first few lab sessions were particularly challenging for girls, where they are expected to use drills, hammers and other tools with which boys are naturally more comfortable.

She added, however, that “as the course progresses, girls often do better in the presentation and report aspects of the course where organisation and clarity of work are key.

“Boys tend to go with the last minute stand up and improvise approach!”

Similar success rates for male and female applicants to these subjects show that the imbalance is down to a lower number of female applicants.

This is increasingly less true of Chemistry, where 47% of the 2009 intake were female, a rise of 10% on 2005. Indeed, Physiological Sciences is just 33% male in the 2010 cohort.

In the non-scientific subjects, Economics & Management was the stand-out statistic. In 2009, 80% of the intake were male.

Tom Raeburn, an E&M student at Worcester, said that the subject “is seen by some as a boot camp for entry into the City, which in itself is a male dominated environment.”

Rohan Sakhrani, a first year E&M student, commented that in the City “the high male population in such a dog eat dog world is to be expected…although in Pembroke I’d say some of the female E&Mists are quite vociferous as it is.”

However, Reena Virdee of Oxford Women In Business said, “It’s important to stress that you don’t need to do a specific subject to be successful in business….Employers are looking for when rounded applicants from a variety of backgrounds and disciples. So, despite some subjects being male skewed, this doesn’t really correspond to the male to female ratio in business.”

Politics is another profession that has been viewed as the preserve of men, with PPE often described as a “training ground” for Westminster.
The gender balance in PPE does not bode well for increasing the numbers of women in politics. 68% of the 2009 intake for PPE were male, and in 2010 this went up to 70%.

The percentage of female students studying Modern Languages has fallen to 55% in 2010.
First year linguist, Howard McDonald, spoke of “the general feeling that the subject is dominated by a female presence.

“Murmurs can be heard as people shuffle out of the lecture hall, to the tune of, ‘There’s a lot of women in there.’ ”
Men only make up about one third of English students. Henry Golding, a second year English student, said of his female peers, “They’ll all go and have children once they’ve finished their degree, so I guess it’s best that they do something frivolous like English for a few years, rather than something that will affect people’s lives, like law or officiating football matches.”

Moreover, women are a small majority in Law, making up 53% of the 2009 and 2010 intakes. Theology was the most balanced subject in 2009, with 21 male and 21 female students selected from 57 applicants of each gender. In 2010, Philosophy & Modern Languages accepted 9 students of each gender.

A jurispudence graduate from Oriel College is suing OXLIP, an Oxford based law college, for £100,000, after she failed to qualify as a solicitor at the end of her course.

Miss Abramova, who graduated from Oriel in 2004 with a 2:1, began a legal practitioner’s course at the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice (OXILP), aiming to become a solicitor.

Abramova alleges that OXILP had not adequately prepared her for the exams, and that their “clearly negligent” tuition resulted in her failure to qualify as a solicitor, and subsequent failure to pass the New York Bar Exam.

“I recently decided not to retake that examination,” Abramova told the Court.

She added, “This is because I have found it psychologically difficult to take legal examinations following my experiences on the Course and subsequently, at OXILP”.

Abramova’s barrister, Oliver Hyams, told the court that the law college failed Ms Abramova by only providing “tuition in examination techniques” after she had already failed her first set of tests in May 2005.

A spokesman for OXILP said, “At all times since 2004, the year Maria began her course, [her work] has consistently been graded ‘very good’ or as is the case now ‘commendable’ – the top grade.”

The spokesperson added that of the 357 other students who studied who studied at the Oxford Law School in the same year as Abramova, more than 99% went on to pass the paper over which Abramova is suing.

Josephine Lyall, who is currently studying on the LPS course, said, “You’re not examined on anything you’re not actively taught…[the tutors] tell you everything you need to know”.

Lyall said her previous studies of Classics, at St Hilda’s College, were “much more demanding”. She described her current legal course as “much more programmed”, and added that it is “a lot easier [than Oxford]– you don’t really need to think about it too much”.

Abramova’s decision to sue her Law College after failing to pass her exams has prompted wider concerns that the raise in tuition fees for higher education will usher in a new “consumer culture” among students.

The fees in 2005 for the OXILP course were £8,195 for both home and international students.

OUSU President David Barclay told Cherwell, “This case is a clear signal of how a consumer culture will affect universities.

“As students take an increasingly large financial stake in their studies, expectations of course quality and student experience will undoubtedly go up.

“Oxford University needs to invest now in the mechanisms that will take these expectations into account.

“We need to give students the opportunity to solve their own problems, otherwise this will not be the last time we see [establishments] in court.”

OXILP was established jointly by the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes in 1993. It became a fully integrated part of Oxford Brookes within the School of Social Sciences and Law in 2008.