New Scientist 12/2/06: Halal-standard slaughtering doesn't need animals awake

[Guest guest]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19225805.100 & feedId=life_rss20

 

Halal-standard slaughtering doesn't need animals awake

02 December 2006

From New Scientist Print Edition

 

" He has only forbidden you dead meat and blood, and the flesh of

swine and that on which any other name has been invoked besides that

of God. " (The Koran, 2:173)

 

Muslim religious law requires, among other things, that an animal

must be drained of blood before it is halal - permissible for

consumption. Ritual slaughter according to Jewish dietary law -

shechita - has the same prescription. Most Muslim slaughterers

believe that drainage will only be complete if the throat of the

animal is slit without stunning it first, but now Haluk Anil of the

University of Bristol, UK, and colleagues have shown that the amount

of blood drained from the animal, and the rate of blood loss, is the

same regardless of whether or not it is stunned first.

 

Anil's team have already shown that stunning does not affect

" bleed-out " in sheep. Now they have done the same thing in cattle.

They measured the bleed-out in 13 cattle killed by the tradition

Muslim method, and 13 killed in the same way, but having first been

stunned by a captive-bolt-pistol blow to the head (Animal Welfare,

vol 15, p 325).

 

" Stunning does not impede blood loss, therefore this objection cannot

be used any more, " says Anil, who is coordinating a European Union

project to examine legislation and welfare issues related to

religious slaughter, both shechita and halal.

 

--

Kim Bartlett, Publisher of ANIMAL PEOPLE Newspaper

Postal mailing address: P.O. Box 960, Clinton WA 98236 U.S.A.

CORRECT EMAIL ADDRESS IS: <ANPEOPLE

Website: http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/ with French and Spanish

language subsections.