Big Chiller
Registered Senior Member
Should we ban the Kosher/Halal method of killing unstunned animals?
- Thread starter Michael
- Start date
With respect to my reply, you're not making any sense.
No, penetrating stun bolts have fallen out of favor in recent years exactly because of concerns over BSE. They've been replaced in commercial operations by non-penetrating stunners, which are less reliable at causing immediate insensation.
You may not, unless you can back it with the sort of scientific study that you keep demanding of others (and speculating does not exist without bothering to search for it).
Given the choice, I'd opt for the former. Yeah, there's a small chance that it doesn't knock you unconscious, or that you wake up before you bleed out. But I'd run that risk over the absolute certainty that I'm going to suffer pain and sit there slowly waiting to die as I bleed out (and that's the best case throat-slitting - done poorly, it's absolutely brutal).
Big Chiller
Registered Senior Member
I was responding to S.A.M.'s post about using stun on cattle that poultry is the most consumed meat not beef.
Ah, I see. My apologies.
I'll wait for evidence that supports your assertion - because I still believe that the loss in blood pressure is fast enough to make sensation of pain irrelevant, having seen enough such dabihas in my lifetime and knowing that blood loss itself is characterised by numbness to pain. Also having felt the shock of an electric current, which is painful throughout the body, I am not convinced it is mitigating of the pain, quite the reverse. It seems to me an unnecessary and remarkably insensitive torture inflicted on an animal - I've heard similar arguments by those who favour tasers and argue voltage and current while ignoring the fact that electric shocks are painful.
I did do a perfunctory search, which only made me aware of how little basis there is for any claims. I've researched euthanasia quite widely for my own research purposes and added to what little research is available on comparative methods of slaughter where the animals stress is the focus [note that the ability of the method to render the animal insensate is directly proportional to the impact on the skull] what we really have here are innovations of the old hammer on the skull method used to knock out animals before technology took a hand. Stating that impact especially on the skull, never mind more than once, is less stressful [remember that the animals are in line watching the ones ahead get whacked] than bleeding out is a remarkably obtuse argument to me.
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The animal is irrelevant except that sympathy is directly linked to size and ability [of the animal] to express stress and pain.
Why "irrelevant" rather than "zero"?
And my references indicate that this is simply incorrect.
You have personal experience on the level of slicing used in dabiha? Do elaborate. How did you survive?
Your previous work was in rats, not cattle or chickens for domestic consumption. And you have - again - ignored my link as perhaps too unsupportive of your central policy of avoidance.
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Note the bolded word. Is a jet plane an innovation of a Sopwith?
Rather, it is remarkably obtuse to compare an event that may cause severe pain at a maximum incidence of 5% in all animals slaughtered to a procedure that lasts at least five or six times as long and occurs in 100% of all animals slaughtered - which the other animals in line are also watching.
What I "asserted" there was a preference. Not sure what would constitute "evidence" for that.
If you want evidence that being cut is painful, it should be easy enough to perform a quick home test. But probably avoid cutting your neck or any arteries.
The stunners used in slaughter of cows are typically not electrical devices. They use pressurized air or a chemical explosion to propel a metal pin against the skull. If it goes well, the resulting concussion results in near-immediate unconsciousness. Having been knocked unconscious a few times in my life, I can attest that the pain associated with such only occurs much later, once you regain consciousness (and often not for a little while after that).
But as to electric stunners (which are used for pigs): being myself an electrical engineer, and so having been electrocuted many times, I can again attest that the pain only occurs after the shock is over with and normal nerve function can resume. Although I've never been shocked to the point of unconsiousness, I don't see how one would feel any pain in such a process until regaining consciousness. I've certainly never felt any pain during an actual shock (immediately afterwards, sure, but not during).
Point is that stunning methods only present the possibility of pain or trauma if something goes wrong (they aren't correctly applied, or the animal is not then killed before regaining consciousness). Killing by throat-slitting guarantees pain and suffering (including the awareness of helplessness in the face of imminent death) even when everything goes exactly right. This probably was the most human way to slaughter an animal before modern times - sure beats stabbing them to death, or bashing their brains in with a rock, or poisoning them. But there's a wider array of options available now.
Right. So?
Right. So?
The stunning set-ups are typically constructed in such a way that none of the animals can directly see what's happening (including the one being stunned). For that matter, there isn't much to see - the stunner is placed against the animal's skull, there's a "bang" as the pin releases and retracts, and the animal goes limp. We aren't talking about some caveman crushing their skulls with a sledgehammer or something like that.
Likewise, I don't see why watching one's fellow animals be tied up and have their throats slit open would be any less traumatic than watching the stunning process.
More than that, I don't see why you're on this mission to prove that modern slaughter methods are less humane than Halal or Kosher methods in the first place. Just to spite some activists in Britain or wherever that want to ban Halal butchery to piss of Muslims? If so, you should be aware that Halal and Kosher slaughter are both legal, recognized methods in the entirety of the West. The relevant laws in the US explicitly classify them as acceptably humane, right alongside stunning-based methods. The mainstream is totally okay with this stuff, and kosher and halal meats are widely available (I had halal meat for lunch yesterday). For that matter, there's no shortage of Muslims who are fine with including stunning into halal butchery, so it again seems like you're going out of your way to manufacture an argument here.
And in the process missing the real issues with humaneness in animal slaughter, which have nothin to do with variations between methods (all of the ones under consideration are widely considered acceptable, if done correctly) and everything to do with failures to properly implement the methods as they are supposed to work. It's not an issue of which particular methods are used, but of what institutional and systemic frameworks are empowered to ensure that the methods are implemented correctly.
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Big Chiller
Registered Senior Member
I'm sure a human would feel a lot more pain than a cow from having the throat cut.
What is the argument here SAM? Geoff presented the evidence. Sure,more work can and should be done in this subject area. However, as the field stands, the evidence demonstrates that stunning is much less painful than exsanguination via throat slit followed by prayer to some God.
Yes, I've also completed ethical forms, I've sacrificed tens of thousands of animals. Decapitation is rarely ethically approved anymore and usually you have to have a good reason to do it. Exsanguination only occurs when perfusing an animal under heavy anesthesia and then it's via the heart not the carotid artery.
I'm curious. Would you knowingly eat curries made from meat where the animal was dead (for a few seconds - but definitely dead) prior to exsanguination and not religiously "kosher/halal"? There's certainly no ethical concerns as the animal would have been sacrificed in a scientifically less painful manner and thus more ethically. There's no medical concerns, as the animal is still bled-out (not that it makes a difference medically anyway). The only difference would be the animal was not sacrificed according to a Bronze Age religious superstitious tradition.
Now, think about the wider implications of saying no. Of being raised to be so utterly fearful of some superstition nonsense that the moral progress of society is stunted. Ever wonder WHY Slavery was NOT made illegal in the Middle East? Ever wonder why women are still stoned to death in Iran? When the rational is "because God said so" or "because religious tradition demands it ...aka: because God said so" then there is little room for rational and logical debate. How is it possible to condemn Slavery as unethical when God says it is ethical? How is it possible to make a case that stoning a women to death is immoral, when God says it's moral (or I should say some men living in the Bronze Age, speaking a different language, living in a different world, for different reasons said God said it's moral). Here we have animals slaughtered painfully over the course of 2.5+ minutes as they bleed-out or stunned and nearly instantaneously rendered unconscious. HOW could anyone, given this information, purposely choose the MORE painful method? YET, get this, that is exactly what people here are going to do this week. Think about that. Think about the logic of "dead meat" exsanguination being sacrilegious. Somehow, for some insane reason, just because the animal has been "dead" for 10 seconds (+/- 9.9 seconds) it now no longer satisfies the religious requirements of some Bronze Age God. Eating the animal is a sin! How much more asinine can one get?!?! It's nearly pathological to demand an animal have it's throat cut while alive - just to ensure some invisible sky-daddy is appeased. I'm sorry but that is f*cking crazy. Just crazy. As in institutionally insane crazy.
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^ because God said so...how could you not know? unbeliever!
Remember to stun yourself before you eat yourself.
(how will that work? )Peace be unto you