Spencer is way off mark

4:20pm Tuesday 4th September 2001

Councillor Anthony Spencer says I am “an unfortunate example of the ignorance and intolerance that exists in our society today” (Ritual circumcision is harmless', August 30).

This is because I think it is wrong to circumcise infants and wrong to kill fully conscious animals by slitting their throats.

If the councillor has got it right, lots of people must be just as ignorant and intolerant as I am. For example, Professor Harold Hillman a man who knows what he's talking about is on record as saying Shechita is both offensive and barbaric. Quite a few rabbis say very much the same.

I agree wholeheartedly with the councillor about the horrors of battery farming but, as my mother explained to me when I was very small, two wrongs don't make a right.

Finally, about circumcision: we're told the baby does not suffer. Believe that, and you'll believe anything.

John Miles, Edgware