Halal and Kosher slaughter 'must end' Most butchers have to stun animals first The method of animal slaughter used by Jews and Muslims should be banned immediately, according to an independent advisory group. The Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), which advises the government on how to avoid cruelty to livestock, says the way Kosher and Halal meat is produced causes severe suffering to animals. Both the Jewish and Muslim religions demand that slaughter is carried out with a single cut to the throat, rather than the more widespread method of stunning with a bolt into the head before slaughter. Kosher and Halal butchers deny their method of killing animals is cruel and have expressed anger over the recommendation. 'Clearly suffering' One worshipper at the Central London Mosque told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Everything about the Islamic way of life is under attack so it makes you wonder if this is actually about humanity to animals." Peter Jinman, president of the British Veterinary Association said vets respected people's religious beliefs, but urged Muslims to be respectful of animals too. The brain is instantaneously starved of blood and there is no time to start feeling any pain Muslim Council of Great Britain "We're looking at what is acceptable in the moral and ethical society we live in," he told Today. FAWC said it wanted an end to the exemption currently allowed for Kosher and Halal meat from the legal requirement to stun animals first. It says cattle can take up to two minutes to bleed to death - amounting to an abuse of the animals. "This is a major incision into the animal and to say that it doesn't suffer is quite ridiculous," said FAWC chairwoman, Dr Judy MacArthur Clark. Compassion in World Farming backed the call, saying: "We believe that the law must be changed to require all animals to be stunned before slaughter." 'Way of life' Muslims and Jews argue that their long established method of slaughter results in a sudden loss of blood from the head, causing animals to feel virtually nothing. Q&A: Animal slaughter They say they will fight any attempt to prevent a practice required by their religion and central to their way of life. One rabbi, who had been practicing the Jewish method of animal slaughter for around 40 years, told BBC News: "The process takes a fraction of a second. "With a very, very sharp knife all the vessels in the neck are severed and that means there's no blood going to the brain and the animal loses consciousness very rapidly and dies soon after that." The Muslim Council of Britain says animals are not distressed when they are slaughtered. "It's a sudden and quick haemorrhage. A quick loss of blood pressure and the brain is instantaneously starved of blood and there is no time to start feeling any pain," said spokesman Dr Majid Katme. The Humanists movement, which has previously called for the abolition of ritual slaughter, said ethical values should be put above religious ones. "There is no imperative for Muslims or Judaists to eat meat produced in this manner," said spokesman Roy Saich. "There is no reason why they should not simply abstain from eating meat altogether if they do not wish to eat the same meat as the rest of us." Link at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2977086.stm55 responses total.
Seeing that the subject of Kosher was being hotly debated, this seemed appropriate. So what do you think? Personally, well, the fact that the blood drain is instantaneous is not very convincing. I could be wrong. Anyone got any opinions on this?
I have not witnessed either method being applied, nor have I shared the experience of any animal being slaughtered by either method, so I do not feel capable of holding a fully informed opinion on the matter. What I do feel qualified to say is that this is a matter primarily of emotional value to humans rather than one of any real concern to the animals involved. They're being slaughtered either way. Since I enjoy eating meat, I accept that.
Hmmm. So Eric, you think that how much an animal suffers is immaterial? I think that's the heart of the matter.
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(>3000 years for the earliest Kashrut laws. Halal is only about 1400 years but is somewhat based on Kashrut.)
I think it is a bit disingenuous, and maybe even hypocritical, to eat meat -- especially given the way our society removes the concept of meat from any connection the consumer may experience to the animal from which it comes -- and be concerned about whether the animal suffers for one second or five minutes while it is being slaughtered. (Especially when nobody is making any noise about how much the animal suffers throughout its entire life up to the the point at which it is slaughtered -- except possibly those who don't eat meat, whose opinions are irrelevant to this particular discussion anyway.)
Well, granted, all that other suffering is as relevant as the suffering during slaughter. But that doesn't mean suffering is unimportant.
A flea is important. But its importance is insignificant in the larger context in which we experience that individual flea. So?
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Let's not go too overboard here. You're still talking about killing
an animal, whether it's with a bolt to the head (which is normally pretty
humane, but that's probably incidental as it's also tremendously effective)
or with a throat-slitting. It's not like they're cutting the animal with
little bits of paper in some bizaare reenactment of an old Chinese torture
technique.
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Re #10: Somehow I doubt "authentic death by papercuts meat" would be a big seller. ;>
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Yeah, but cutting the earthworms just makes more of them.... (Music from the Sorcerer's Apprentice.)
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Re #8: If you're arguing that we shouldn't worry about how animals are killed, because our energies would be more effectively spent working on something else, then that's a sensible argument. But you need to back it up by saying what you think we should be spending energy on. But if your argument is that we shouldn't do anything about this particular bit of gratuitous suffering because, well, there's suffering all over, then that doesn't hold water. How do things get better? by addressing one problem at a time.
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How does the cheeseburger make it to your mouth before you pull up to the drive-through window?
it's of little concern to you.
K.
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If you ban kosher slaughter, orthodox jews and muslims will be slaughtering livestock in closets with coat hangers! You don't want to see that, do you? The bolt to the head technique makes sense to me, but I don't eat kosher foods with any sort of intention. What does it matter what they do with their cattle?
How would you prefer to be slaughtered - knocked unconscious, your neck twisted, or your throat slit?
There is a certain aesthetic appeal of getting one's throat slit.
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Could I be chased down by topless women, like in that Monty Python sketch?
#22 is the funniest thing I've heard this week.
Death through excess
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This is just another rule set by the european goverment. They let the french get away with eating horses and frogs! I also think when (not if knowing EU) they impose this the killing of meat will go under ground so to speak which will be a bigger risk to public health
It is not meat until it is killed. You cannot kill meat. You can kill an animal.
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#23: If given the choice between slaughter by neck-twisting, throat-slitting, pre-slaughter-unconsciousness, or not being slaughtered at all, I and most other people would choose to not be slaughtered 100 times out of 100 times. Therefore, there is absolutely no difference between the three methods; I have chosen each of them zero times. If I am an individual of bovine persuasion and I am sitting in a pen with other individuals similar to me, and those individuals are disappearing at an alarming rate, the question running through my mind and through our conversation is not going to be "how are we going to be slaughtered?" Actually, the conversation would consist pretty much of "moo," but translated it would involve "are we going to get slaughtered?" Anything beyond that question is pretty much irrelevant. A cow dragged off to the slaughterhouse is going to be thinking, "oh no please don't slaughter me I don't want to die," not "ah well, at least I can be thankful I'm not being dragged off by those kosher whackos." Actually, the cow, being non-sentient by any standards we can measure, isn't going to be thinking anything at all.
>Therefore, there is absolutely no difference between the three methods... I wouldn't go that far. If "go on living" isn't an option, I'd pick "painless death" over "painful death" any day.
Re 33. Apparently cows are indeed not bright enough to figure out that they're about to be slaughtered. But pigs are. As I understand it, pig slaughterhouses have to be designed and run in such a way as to not tip off the ones who are waiting in line.
Probably they smell the fear/panic of the slaughtered animals? Pigs are pretty smart compared to cows.
Re #33: Steve (senna) - do you have a preference if your only two options are to die peacefully or to die as the result of a month of torture?
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#37: I think I'd still be curious about why that "not to die" option isn't available and theorizing potential scenarios where it can be added to the list. Isn't that sort of a rhetorical question? Many animals are capable of determining when they are in danger. I think Darwin wrote something about that a while ago.
I think the point is pigs are better at figuring this out than cows. Neither domestic pigs nor cows really represent the wild variety; perhaps wild cows would figure things out sooner (or at least put up more of a fuss just on general grounds).
The ancestor species to the domestic cow, the aurochs, is extinct.
Re 40. I think pigs are simply more intelligent and self-aware creatures than cows are.
Therefore we shouldn't eat them because they taste good?
The whole idea of the kosher rules for slaughter was to minimize the suffering
experienced by the animal. Back three thousand-plus years ago, certain
societies considered it hearty evening entertainment to watch a food animal
limping around on three legs while the fourth was roasted and eaten.
I read an account a few years back of a farm family slaughtering a pig by
slowly sawing its head off as it squealed.
The kosher rules are intended to make the Jew remember the sanctity of life,
and what was lost in order to bring a meal to the table, not exclusively
for cleanliness reasons as suggested in #4.
For kosher meat, the slaugher is performed by a specially trained religious
official called the "schochet." He is required to use a "chalef," a long,
razor-sharp knife (which may not have even a single nick on it that might
tear the flesh and cause pain), and sever the arteries in the neck with a
single swift cut in order to render the animal unconscious by a loss of
blood pressure to the brain - the same mechanism that causes fainting in
humans.
http://www.hipusa.com/eTools/webmd/A-Z_Encyclopedia/faintingbasics.htm
I suspect that the effort to ban kosher slaughter is just a wedge issue
to lead to an eventual ban on meat-eating altogether. It worked for guns,
after all.
Vegetarian Advocate: A New York Ban on Meat Consumption in the Workplace
By Jack Rosenberger - http://www.satyamag.com/may03/rosenberger.html
Today, a statewide ban on meat consumption seems like an impossible
dream, but what we are trying to achieve is something that could
happen in a distant tomorrow.
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Actually, PETA is suing KFC . . . [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/07/national/07CHIC.html?th]
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Sure you do:
Login: ericaltercation Password: altercation
Larry K provided this a few agoras ago.
I used to use cypherpunks/cypherpunks all the time until it stopped working.
uscho/uscho may still work ... haven't tried it in a while. Another one that was floating around was slashdot2000/slashdot2000
corporatemedia/stillsucks
Kosher slaughter laws were supposed to be a compromise that G-d made with man to ensure that animals would suffer as little as possible in the process of rendering their lives for our food. Professor in Agricultural studies Dr. Temple Grandin notes that cattle will readily walk into the restraint box in Kosher slaughtering plants if treated kindly and that animals slaughtered under other conditions will panic due to the postulated presence of a fear hormone. It seems that these animals loose conciousness before they even have the chance to elicit the sort of stress response that can be identified by smell of other animals. In some cases of non-Kosher slaughter I've heard tales of animals being skinned alive after 'stun' methods such as electroshock proved to be, shall we say, 'less-than-effective.' The most ethical treatment of animals may be not to eat them at all, but if one is to eat an animal, it may be safe to assume that a Kosher-slaughtered animal is one that didn't suffer so much. Thank you for reviewing my humble subission.
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BTW, the freferences for #52 were as follows:
G-d's comprimise (before flood, only plants were "food")... Genesis 9
Reference to Temple Grandin...
http://agriculture.de/acms1/conf6/ws5atransport.htm
(Cached copy exists on Google under "Animal Welfare during Transport and
Slaughter")
Temple Grandin's own website... http://www.grandin.com/
(And that was "compromise"... must be the BSE in the non-Kosher meat!)
Which brings us to....
It's just Offal What They're Feeding the Livestock These Days --and Boy Are
Those Cows Mad!
TSE's, or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, have been a
much-publicised problem since the 1990's. In spite of Oprah's exposee'
(http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/television/oprah_transcript.html)
and the ensuing trial (http://www.mad-cow.org/post_xmas.html) along with
her wining the law suit, band-aid solutions, at best, have been proposed to the
American Government (http://www.cspinet.org/reports/madcomnt.htm) and may
not stem the tide of the disease.
The practice of feeding dead animals, or offal, to other animals is a
particularly gruesome practice and the epidemiological vector of prion
transmission. (Prions being the causative agents of TSE's). Prions have no
DNA and are unaffected by radiation, oxidizing agents, or any other form of
sanitization that would not, essentially, reduce the "food" to greenhouse
gasses.
With this said, I am surprised that the culture that will not allow the
consumption of cheeseburgers as not to violate the 2nd part of Deuteronomy
14:21, would allow the practice of feeding cows offal-- as though it would
in some roundabout way not violate the FIRST part of that verse. And while
I can find no explicit injuction in the Torah against such a practice, I
should think that sommon sense would tell us that it's wrong for similar
reasons. In fact, the feeding of any sort of animal to a ruminant seems
unnatural and would seem to be, a priori, against G-d's Law.
Nevertheless, it seems that BSE can be bloodborne
(http://www.which.net/campaigns/food/meatsafety/misc/bserep0602.pdf), and
that Kosher slaughter may reduce the risks of transmission (Ibid, pg. 6;[ also
see http://www.shemayisrael.com/chareidi/archives5762/chukas/CK62amadcow.ht
m) although it may not eliminate the risk altogether.
(If only plants were 'food' before the Flood, what was Abel doing? Perhaps you meant before the Fall?)
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