[Semiapies]

Kosher, at least, is not a standard for "ritual slaughter of animals", but a dietary standard. Kosher meat rules require fairly humane methods of animal slaughter, whereas captive-bolt stunners are the rug under which many factory-farms try to sweep their treatment of animals at slaughter-time.

As for halal, I'm not as familiar, but due to the level of ignorance you've shown on kosher, I'm going to have to call shenanigans and say "citation needed".

[nkurz]

I think you are more wrong than right. While 'kosher' is a dietary standard, there are certain conditions that must be met before meat can be considered kosher. These ritual slaughter techniques fall under 'shechita', which traditionally requires that the animal be unharmed (hence unstunned) before its throat is sliced with a knife in a very particular manner. If this is not done, the meat is not eligible to be considered kosher.

Various countries currently have exemptions to their humane slaughter rules explicitly for Jewish and Muslim traditional practices. Here are some citations:

http://www.rspca.org.uk/ImageLocator/LocateAsset?asset=docum...

http://www.thepoultrysite.com/poultrynews/21457/controversy-...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2977086.stm

[Semiapies]

"I think you are more wrong than right"

Do justify that, especially in the context of the widespread abuse of animals under those humane-treatment laws.

[nkurz]

I mean that semantically, not morally. While it's technically true that kosher is a dietary standard, food meets this classification based on the means of slaughter. I have no particularly strong beliefs as to exactly what constitutes the humane treatment of animals.

I run a company selling primarily vegan products (http://screamsorbet.com), but also hunt and fish. I eat less meat than most Americans, but also have two whole wild boar hams currently in brine for Christmas dinner. I care about the conditions of animals, but eat meat with gusto when I do.

I agree wholeheartedly with the parent article that there should a consistent set of laws, and that exemptions based on belief are a loophole that should be closed. Either shechika is humane or it is not; but the religious beliefs of performant should not be a factor.

[Semiapies]

"I mean that semantically, not morally."

Then you're being uselessly pedantic, and failing at it - there's no slaughter involved in making quite a lot of kosher food.

"exemptions based on belief are a loophole that should be closed"

Then expand the freedoms of all people to make exemptions on peaceful religious activity superfluous. Otherwise, when dealing with governments that carefully parse and rank claims of rights (particularly when it comes to "weird" minority groups), exemptions can serve to protect particular freedoms for the people who most care for them.

[mingdingo]

Just answer one thing:

Do Jewish slaughter laws call for the animal to be conscious when having its throat cut, and do you think this is preferable to being stunned?

That is, if you HAD to kill your pet dog by cutting its throat, would you want it to be stunned or not?

I probably used Kosher and Halal incorrectly, but suffice it to say that slaughter of conscious animals is widely practiced in the Jewish and Muslim faiths. To ask another question: Do you think western slaughterhouses adopted captive-bolt stunning because they were bored, or because it granted a small reprieve at the end of the farming cycle?

[Semiapies]

"Just answer one thing"

Ah, so this isn't a matter of ignorance, but deliberate portrayal with a yes-or-no gotcha question.

But no, the requirement for an animal to be conscious is not universally agreed upon in kosher law. Further, the intent of kosher slaughter practices is to induce rapid loss of consciousness through blood-loss, minimal pain via the use of a razor-sharp blade, and a resulting humane death.

You can certainly cherry-pick kosher meat facilities that have failed to live up to this standard, but I can simply point to the normal state of meat-slaughter in the developed world, particularly the US.

[mingdingo]

Would it be more humane to cut an animal's throat while it was conscious, or unconscious? That's all I'm asking. If that's considered a gotcha question, then we've probably reached an impasse...

[ars]

It's more humane if it's conscious because to make an animal unconscious you have to hurt it. I'd rather simply kill it instead of hurt it first, and then kill it.

A captive bolt does not always work on the first try, and it doesn't always fully stun either.

You can't just increase the power of the bolt or you get brain matter mixed into the meat, raising the risk of mad cow disease. So you have to carefully tune it to "enough to stun, not enough to kill". It doesn't always work.

With Kosher slaughter on the other hand making sure the animal dies very fast is important otherwise the meat is not kosher and can't be sold.

[mingdingo]

It's not really "hurting" it if you make it deeply unconscious, which is the goal of stunning. Can it be botched? Yes. But just like medicine that sometimes doesn't work, or isn't administered properly, the solution is not to stop using the medicine, but to correct the mistakes made when delivering it.

Consider this: When you use a stunner properly, the animal feels a split second of pain before becoming unconscious. At this point, pretty much every vet would say it can't feel pain.

But if you cut its throat while conscious, it can feel the pain of the wound immediately, and continues to feel it until the brain starts shutting down. This can take minutes. Cutting the throat does not cause immediate unconsciousness, and this is the problem.

Compare a properly stunned animal vs. an animal whose throat has been cut by via sechita, and tell me which one reaches unconsciousness faster. Because that is the animal that endures less pain in death.

[ars]

The brain shuts down within seconds, not minutes.

It takes a few minutes for it to die, but it's totally unconscious for that time.

And I prefer to look at actual usage, not perfect usage.

For example: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.meatsci.2008.07.016 for this type of animal 53% of the time the stunning did not work properly.

And according to http://www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/slaughter/std4.htm 5-10% of captive bolt stunning does not work properly. There are plenty of other sources that say the same thing.

[Semiapies]

That's all I'm asking

No, it isn't. You tried to go on about ritual slaughter of animals, then backpedaled as your ignorance was pointed out. Now you're trying to reduce the issue of cruelty to animals in a slaughterhouse to a question of consciousness at the moment of slaughter, ignoring the fact that kosher laws require better treatment of animals than the civil laws governing slaughterhouses. The "we stun them, so they don't suffer" line is a favorite of the meat industry, even if it doesn't always work out that way.

But then, cruelty to animals isn't your concern. After all, it would be most humane not to slaughter the animal at all - but conspicuously, you're not arguing for vegetarianism.

[anamax]

> That is, if you HAD to kill your pet dog by cutting its throat, would you want it to be stunned or not?

If you had to kill your pet dog by cutting its throat, would you rather beat it unconscious first?

Anything can be black and white if you leave out enough details. And, you can even decide which side is which with your choice of details.

[vacri]

That's a misrepresentation of what he was saying, don't know why you got the upmods. A captive-bolt stunner is a quick strike that stuns. "beating" something is protracted causation of pain. You're not 'filling in' details that have been left out, you're creating a new situation out of whole cloth.

[Semiapies]

"A captive-bolt stunner is a quick strike that stuns."

If it's successful, yes. They often aren't; it's not hard to find undercover video of "stunned" animals in clear, loud pain.

Let's take this whole what-if to the extreme:

If I had to be turned into a cow and slaughtered and was given the choice of a random secular slaughterhouse that would use a stunner and a random kosher slaughterhouse, I'd absolutely choose the kosher option. I'd have a better chance of not being injured and mistreated on the way to my death, and I'd have a better chance for a clean, quick, and minimally painful death.

[mingdingo]

I didn't leave out details. We are talking about stunning it with a captive-bolt stunner.