Animals Feel The Pain Of Religious Slaughter

[Mriana]

Animals feel the pain of religious slaughter

 

Brain signals have shown that calves do appear to feel pain when slaughtered according to Jewish and Muslim religious law, strengthening the case for adapting the practices to make them more humane.

 

The findings increase pressure on religious groups that practice slaughter without stunning to reconsider.

 

In most western countries, animals must be stunned before they are slaughtered, but there is an exemption for religious practice, most prominently Jewish shechita and Muslim dhabiha. Animal welfare groups have long argued that on welfare grounds, the exemptions should be lifted, as they have been in Norway.

 

Johnson's work, funded by the UK and New Zealand agriculture ministries, builds on findings in human volunteers of specific patterns of brain electrical activity when they feel pain. Recorded with electroencephalograms, the patterns were reproducible in at least eight other mammal species known to be experiencing pain.

 

Johnson developed a way of lightly anaesthetising animals so that although they experienced no pain, the same electrical pain signals could be reliably detected, showing they would have suffered pain if awake.

 

The team first cut calves' throats in a procedure matching that of Jewish and Muslim slaughter methods. They detected a pain signal lasting for up to 2 minutes after the incision. When their throats are cut, calves generally lose consciousness after 10 to 30 seconds, sometimes longer.

Cut-throat practice

 

The researchers then showed that the pain originates from cutting throat nerves, not from the loss of blood, suggesting the severed nerves send pain signals until the time of death. Finally, they stunned animals 5 seconds after incision and showed that this makes the pain signal disappear instantly.

 

I'm getting sick.

 

Representatives for both faiths responded by claiming that stunning itself hurts animals. A spokesman for Shechita UK says that the throat cut is so rapid that it serves as its own "stun", adding that there is abundant evidence shechita is humane.

 

I don't know, but then again, I see no purpose in making animal or human sacrifices either.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Yep, gawd requires animal suffering to appease mankind's sinfulness. How holy and just.

 

It's mind-numbing that even in today's world there are people who believe in this animal sacrifice ritualistic nonsense.

[MultifariousBirdLady]

Very interesting, and thanks for posting this.

For what it's worth, I think it's helpful to remember that these particular religious instructions for slaughter were created when modern stunning techniques were not possible. I suspect that the specific methods of slaughter were thought to be quick and humane at the time. The real difficulty is that religious dictates cause those practices to be frozen in time despite the progress made in more humane slaughtering techniques.

[MultifariousBirdLady]

P.S. I wonder if this study will end up being used against home/hobby and small-scale/free-range/organic farms which grow, slaughter and sell their own meat.

Or maybe many of those farms already take their live animals to a butchering company which stuns them before slaughter... anybody know?

[Vomit Comet]

Halal meat tastes like shit. They drain all the blood out. As for kosher, well, I've eaten at plenty of kosher delis and I can't complain.

[OpheliaGinger]

My meat: I prefer it fresh, not even cut from the carcass. rawr

[Vixentrox]

The Nazis did a children's comic strip talking about the evil Jew and his barbaric ritualized way of slautering animals. This article reminded me of that Jew hating comic strip.

[OpheliaGinger]

It's one thing to point out and mock another cultures barbarity, but it is entirely different when you call the other culture inferior.

[HRDWarrior]

I find it interesting that this still takes place enough to warrent studies on it...man, guess I had my head stuck in the sand to believe we were past the stone age....

 

P.S. I wonder if this study will end up being used against home/hobby and small-scale/free-range/organic farms which grow, slaughter and sell their own meat.

Or maybe many of those farms already take their live animals to a butchering company which stuns them before slaughter... anybody know?

 

 

Growing up on a hobby farm we always raised our own meat animals. For us, we took them to a slaughter house when it was time - we found one we trusted, who treated the animals the best, and handled the processing the best. It was actually good to know how things were from start to finish. Heck, we even had one steer who was too dang ornery to load into the trailer (he regularly jumped 5-6' fences) and the guys from the plant came out our house and did it there. The steers I knew didn't have a terrible end (fast and painless), but the birds always bothered me. I hated taking them in, they still don't have a humane way to deal with birds (well, not what I would consider humane anyways).

 

I think seeing and dealing with this first hand has a lot to do with why I don't eat a ton of meat - don't get me wrong, I do like it, but especially now that I'm stuck buying it from the store...at least with our animals I know how they were raised, that they had happy lives (pastures, clean paddocks, clean roomy pens with grass and bugs - for the chickens), and that when it was time we went with the best to ensure they weren't sitting there freaked out for days on end.

 

Still I actually wish I had a bit more willpower (or didn't like meat) since I still don't feel 100% comfortable with the entire process.

[qec]

Yeah, I think stunning is pretty much mandatory. Wow, we have we come so far since the days of Nietzsche.

[Vixentrox]

A couple articles that show the outlawing of kosher killing of animals linked with the Nazis. Outlawing this style of animal slaughter was one of the first things Germany enacted against the Jews. Not that I really care one way or another if it's allowed but those wanting it banned should be aware of how banning it had been used as a tool of the Nazis.

 

http://modiya.nyu.edu/handle/1964/489

 

http://westerncivilizationandculture.blogspot.com/2009/05/animal-right-groups-stays-true-to-their.html

[Kurari]

 

WARNING. THIS IS VERY, VERY GRAPHIC FOOTAGE OF THE SLAUGHTER OF CATTLE IN A "KOSHER" MANNER.

 

Honestly, if you know anything about the rules of Kosher slaughter, you can see how many violations of that are going on here. Not only are these poor beings dying in a horrible fashion, people aren't getting "godly" meat they expect at all.

 

This is one practice that REALLY needs to be shut down and abandoned. I'm sorry, but mass meat production is not set up for the slow ritual of Kosher and you're not getting what you asked for anyway.

 

HRD Warrior: I feel the same way. I used to work on a farm and being able to have private slaughter for hire for a small amount of animals instead of mass production ensured each animal was able to have a fast and compassionate end.

 

We'd do the chickens ourselves though. If you turn them on their back they go into a "trance" and you can put them down and a quick stick through the knife to the brain. They just shudder and go still when you do it that way. No flapping, no awareness, no fear, no knowledge, and probably no pain to the bird.

 

I'm still not comfortable with the process myself, but I tried total vegetarianism once and it didn't work out.

[Mriana]

OK you warned us, so I'm not going to complain that I didn't even make it through nearly 1/2 of it before feeling sick to my stomach and turned it off.

 

My mother would just chop the heads of the chickens and allow them to flap around in her hand until they stopped moving, unfortunately one of the beheaded chickens got away from her and ran into the woods without it's head... believe it or not. Makes "running around like a chicken without it's head" have actual meaning to it. While I could pick up the chickens and hold them like pets, they ran from my mother. However, she never once asked for my help in killing them just because I could pick them up and cuddle them, probably because she knew I would not comply. I would have thrown a tantrum before I would comply, which took too much time and would just upset the chickens more, so she'd never be able to catch them. It was weird how my pets and I had that affect on each other. We'd either calm each other or upset each other and to this day, I can still observe my cats and know when there is something unusual or out of the ordinary happening.

[Kurari]

That's sweet Mriana. I have always loved chickens. I think they are beautiful birds, and people don't give them enough credit. I've never found them dumb or stupid or anything. All the chickens at the farm I worked at were free range. There was a little red hen that used to come and sit on my lap and share my lunch with me everyday, and she loved being scritched up along her neck. She'd close her eyes and cluck contently and her feathers were so soft. I worried she was going to get "tranced" one day, but we normally did that to roosters and "spent" chickens past their egg-laying days. But she was a good layer and a good breeder hen, so she was spared.

 

Then there was Salty, a fancy Sultan capon (neutered rooster) that was there as a rescue and kept as a pet. He lived to an old age but had a hard battle with cancer and finally had to be "tranced" and meet the knife and given a proper burial in the compost pile. That was rough for me seeing him sick and miserable and feeding him with a dropper. He was a sweety that was a really people oriented pet.

 

I still wonder who had it better...the younger chickens who got a short and relatively nice healthy lives and a clean death, or Salty who lived a long life but had a pretty miserable death?

 

It's something I still think about a lot. I still haven't drawn a conclusion.

[Mriana]

I think you rooster Salty had the good life.

[Guest]

That video was absolutely disgusting. I am so glad I do not take part in eating flesh anymore.

[Dagan]

It's a good thing animal sacrifice was made unnecessary by Christ's ultimate sacrifice! Right? Right? Jesus said they didn't have to sacrifice animals anymore right? That thing he said about not abolishing the law but fulfilling it means no more animal sacrifice, right? The fact that sacrifices disappeared from Judaism has nothing to do with the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, it's all because Jesus loved animals. Right?

 

…

 

In a related note, does anyone want my copy of Fast Food Nation? It was not as funny as I thought it would be, and I already knew the meat packing industry was gross. No big revelation there.

 

Like HRDWarrior, I grew up on a hobby farm too and we slaughtered our own chickens. Not the cows though, we sent them to the local slaughterhouse. I'll spare you the gross stories of blood and gore. I've also worked on hog farms, chicken farms and dairy farms and know exactly where my food comes from.

 

There's something wrong with the way people look at food today. People seem surprised that animals die in blood and shit so they can eat Chicken McNuggets and eat a Carls Jr burger ("Carls Jr. Fuck you. I'm eating.") But in general, farmers treat their animals humanely, and slaughterhouses follow humane guidelines and maintain high standards of cleanliness because no one wants to eat shit-contaminated bruised meat full of bone fragments.

 

I think there is a problem with how we understand the food chain. We have become disconnected from it. We no longer understand even where our vegetables come from, let alone meat. We don't have local butcher shops where we can see raw meat hanging in the windows, or watch the butcher make sausage. We no longer have the food-gathering rituals of canning produce in fall, slaughtering a pig in fall to smoke for winter and slaughtering chickens in summer when the family comes over for dinner from the next town.

 

I'm not trying to wax poetic. That's just the way it was. Slaughtering a pig is a bloody, disgusting and messy experience, but it was a normal part of life not even 100 years ago.

 

Now we have feed lots no one can see, slaughterhouses no one visits cranking out processed meat we buy in a cardboard box in the freezer of the local grocery store. We buy veggies in plastic bags from the freezer. Many of us don't even know that peas grow in pods on vines, or that pork chops, pork roast and bacon all come from the same animal ("Yeah right Lisa, a wonderful, magical animal.")

 

I could say it won't matter in 50 years anyway, when we'll all be eating soy protein grown in multi-storey barns and farmed fish because the massive amount of land, water and energy required to raise beef in feed lots (not to mention the pollution) will be impractical except for the very wealthy. But that would be pretty cynical.

[Vixentrox]

I've killed and butchered plenty of animals growing up and of course from hunting. While I don't relish it, it's a chore like washing dishes or doing laundry just more messy and smelly. People that never lived a country existence can hardly be blamed for the disconnect I suppose since they have never had to do these things to survive. Even a simple garden is remote from most city dwellers. When I was growing up, if we didn't raise and butcher it ourselves or hunt and kill it, we likely wouldn't have had any meat at all since we were so poor. The funny thing is, it seems to me country folk have a much better appreciation for nature and animals since they depend on it to survive. City folk usually seem clueless about the cycle of life and believe in absurdities like hunting is cruel.

[RankStranger]

Wow- that video was messed up. I had no idea that a critter could get up and run around after the throat was cut- I guess it isn't unique to chickens. Of course, I always shoot them first (well, not the chickens), so the hogs and deer that I kill usually just flop around a little before I go and cut their throat for good measure.

 

It wouldn't hurt those Jews to use a stun bolt or even a .38. Hell, the meat would probably taste better- as it wouldn't be rolling around in blood and shit so much.

[Mriana]

I've killed and butchered plenty of animals growing up and of course from hunting. While I don't relish it, it's a chore like washing dishes or doing laundry just more messy and smelly. People that never lived a country existence can hardly be blamed for the disconnect I suppose since they have never had to do these things to survive. Even a simple garden is remote from most city dwellers. When I was growing up, if we didn't raise and butcher it ourselves or hunt and kill it, we likely wouldn't have had any meat at all since we were so poor. The funny thing is, it seems to me country folk have a much better appreciation for nature and animals since they depend on it to survive. City folk usually seem clueless about the cycle of life and believe in absurdities like hunting is cruel.

 

Excuse me, but I lived in the country as a child and it sickened me to see my mother do those things. I despise it. BTW, I've been a vegetarian for a lifetime. I would not eat what she killed because it appalled me nor would I eat what my grandfather hunted down and killed. I would not touch meat, period because I saw it as brutal, cruel, and inhumane. My mother had a horrible time getting me to eat meat and she finally gave up when I was around 9 or 10, after the dr to her not to worry about it and not to force it. The country does not change that and it has nothing to do with being "City folk" either. I think it can go either way and people are people.

 

BTW, they were my "friends" long before she killed them and I often I would feel transcendence when I looked into their eyes, esp if I was upset or just dealt with my bio-father, but be that as it may, country v city has nothing to do with it.

[Guest]

I've killed and butchered plenty of animals growing up and of course from hunting. While I don't relish it, it's a chore like washing dishes or doing laundry just more messy and smelly. People that never lived a country existence can hardly be blamed for the disconnect I suppose since they have never had to do these things to survive. Even a simple garden is remote from most city dwellers. When I was growing up, if we didn't raise and butcher it ourselves or hunt and kill it, we likely wouldn't have had any meat at all since we were so poor. The funny thing is, it seems to me country folk have a much better appreciation for nature and animals since they depend on it to survive. City folk usually seem clueless about the cycle of life and believe in absurdities like hunting is cruel.

 

Excuse me, but I lived in the country as a child and it sickened me to see my mother do those things. I despise it. BTW, I've been a vegetarian for a lifetime. I would not eat what she killed because it appalled me nor would I eat what my grandfather hunted down and killed. I would not touch meat, period because I saw it as brutal, cruel, and inhumane. My mother had a horrible time getting me to eat meat and she finally gave up when I was around 9 or 10, after the dr to her not to worry about it and not to force it. The country does not change that and it has nothing to do with being "City folk" either. I think it can go either way and people are people.

 

BTW, they were my "friends" long before she killed them and I often I would feel transcendence when I looked into their eyes, esp if I was upset or just dealt with my bio-father, but be that as it may, country v city has nothing to do with it.

 

+1

 

As I was reading the prior post, I kept saying to myself, "It is exactly the knowledge of where meat comes from why I won't eat it." From the moment I first saw a slaughterhouse video, I began my road to vegetarianism. I seriously doubt that growing up on a farm would have changed my outlook on it. It's a disgusting practice, and I've always thought this way.

 

When I was 7, my grandmother took me fishing and I caught a grouper. She showed me how to clean it and I almost vomited. I was the only one in the family that did not eat fish that evening; and in fact I have never eaten seafood since that moment. I still remember watching the fish in the bucket die a slow, drawn out death. I know it's "just a fish", but I still realized I had killed a living thing, and I didn't like it.

[Mriana]

I am the same way about fish too, Marty. I won't fish and I won't kill a fish either.

[hereticzero]

I find a good heavy axe works as well as stunning. Chop! All done.

[RankStranger]

An axe? On cattle? Seriously? I guess I wouldn't know as I've never got in on slaughtering cattle, but a .22LR has always worked well on hogs. You have to get close and hit it squarely, though- otherwise the bullet can ricochet off the skull. And a 600lb sow can go pretty much anywhere she wants to if she's good and pissed off. I've never had one get back up, but I always keep a solid length of pipe or 2x4 handy just in case.

 

I'll never be a vegetarian for obvious reasons- just don't have much empathy for non-human animals, and they taste good IMO. But what I'll never understand- and find kinda offensive- are people who have no problem eating a cheeseburger, yet can't stomach the THOUGHT of killing that same critter. I have a lot more respect for ya'll vegetarians who live by your convictions.

 

But I guess for some people, feeling good about an action that they find morally questionable requires nothing more than paying some poor slob in a packing plant to do their dirty work.

[agnosticator]

I'll never be a vegetarian for obvious reasons- just don't have much empathy for non-human animals...

 

The reason I stopped eating most meat (except seafood) is empathy for the intelligent, sentient animals. I fished alot until I was in my 20's, and killed the fish ASAP, to minimize their suffering. I can understand eating meat, but it's avoidable and unnecessary suffering that gets to me. Only in an ideal, perfect world would total vegetarianism apply to everyone. I tried for several years, but it was not that good for my health.

 

 

But what I'll never understand- and find kinda offensive- are people who have no problem eating a cheeseburger, yet can't stomach the THOUGHT of killing that same critter. I have a lot more respect for ya'll vegetarians who live by your convictions.

 

But I guess for some people, feeling good about an action that they find morally questionable requires nothing more than paying some poor slob in a packing plant to do their dirty work.

 

You are exactly right! Well said.