A week after the UK’s top vet called for a reform of religious slaughter practices, prime minister David Cameron has insisted kosher slaughter will continue to be protected in the UK.

In a speech to the Knesset on his first official visit to Israel earlier today, Cameron said he had a track record of standing up to protect Jewish practices including kosher Shechita, the set of rules that governs the slaughter of animals under Jewish dietary law.

“On my watch Shechita is safe in the UK,” Cameron said. “When people challenged kosher Shechita, I have defended it. I fought back as a backbench Member of Parliament against the last attempt to do something to change this. And there’s no way I’m allowing that to change now I’m prime minister.”

Cameron also said the Jewish community had been an “absolute exemplar” of integration but stressed “integration doesn’t mean that you have to give up things that you hold very dear in your religion”.

His reassurances come after John Blackwell, the president-elect of the British Veterinary Association, last week called for reform of kosher and halal slaughter practices to safeguard animal welfare.

Blackwell said he was concerned about religious slaughter practices that did not involve the animal being stunned before slaughter, and suggested kosher and halal slaughter may have to be banned in the UK if they were not reformed to take greater account of animal welfare.

In an interview with The Times, Blackwell said: “I don’t think an outright ban is a long way off, there is enough of a view that this practice is inhumane and causes suffering at the time of death.”

In response, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and Shechita UK published a joint letter in The Guardian, saying religious slaughter was at least as humane as conventional methods. “It is unfortunate that the BVA and other animal welfare organisations in the UK tend to view religious slaughter as incompatible with humaneness; quite the contrary is true – compassion and animal welfare stand at the centre of the entire process,” they said.

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