Non-Halal kebab meat

rockykabir

Amosworks,

I'm trying to find the exact source of the German paper regarding the issue of pain in animals during slaughter. The best I've found is this so far:

Taken from http://people.smu.edu/chle/analysis.html

It is believe that during the slitting of the throat, the single swift sharp blade “cut(s) the vessels of the neck, disconnect(ing) the flow of the blood to the nerve in the brain responsible for pain. Thus the animal feels very little pain” (Butt 2003).

To further support this claim, in 2002, a team of German scientist at the School of Veterinary Medicine conducted an experiment to determine the level of pain experienced during the slitting. “By using surgically implanted electrodes, the German scientists discovered that the halal method caused no change in the electrode reading…which indicated no pain was felt, followed by a period of deep sleep or unconsciousness due to the large quantities of blood drained” while the convulsions seen afterwards are “reflex reactions of the spinal cord and the brain (becoming) insensible” which opposes the view of the convulsions as an indication of pain and suffering (Butt 2003).

This was one of the major reasonings as to why Germany's federal administrative tribunal turned down demands made by animal rights groups to outlaw halal/kosher butchery.

However, I'm open minded to view any other papers which you may feel relevant to your understand that the halal/kosher form of slaughter is in any way less humane.

**purplemoon**

That basically said exactly the same as the link I provided earlier. There was another link within the link, IYKWIM, which led to the scientific date.

Nerve impulses still travel around the body after death, hence why a headless chicken will still run around the yard for several minutes, but many equate this with feeling pain or assume the animal is dying in agony, this is not so.

rockykabir

ah yes...sorry bout that purplemoon - just spotted that.

I hope people do read this. There are a lot of misconceptions by many - and this is further fuelled on by animal rights/meat industry groups/tabloids who often have their own agenda.

As I said, I don't have anything against people choosing not to eat Halal meat (for whatever reason that may be other than animal cruelty) - but the facts are all out there if you look hard enough or have people pointing you to the right direction.

**purplemoon**

rockykabir wrote:

ah yes...sorry bout that purplemoon - just spotted that.

Oh don't apologise, it's nice to have a different source saying the same thing, especially as amosworks seemed to think the link I gave was a biased opinion

bluemoon_3

amosworks wrote:

Cooked food is unnatural and most people do eat a lot of insects without realising, just not as many as we used to :rolleyes:

Well, yes, that's exactly the point I was making! If you reject vegetarianism because it is, as you say, "unnatural", then why eat cooked food if you also think it's "unnatural"? I assume your kebabs are cooked. Lol, that's why I said I don't understand using the natural/unnatural justification for diet. Of all the reasons we choose to eat or not eat something, its "naturalness" seems to one of the least important.

If you think about it, whatever choices we make are "natural" in that they are in our "nature" to choose them.

Which is all I was trying to say.

Anyway, I commend your quest to fill your plate in the most ethical way you can. If only everyone did that, even if we pull at different ethical strings, it would be a wonderful thing.

amosworks

I would quickly like to note that unfortunately the MSE site is broken in that I cannot press the thanks button (well I can press it but it does sweet FA). I would like to thank lots of people who are certainly making this a rather interesting thread. I have lots of info on getting what I'd like, as kindly given, and that will keep me busy getting on with it for a while.

I'm finding the thread interesting now and I think we all seem to be learning something positive, so please don't take my lack of thanks as an actual lack of thanks for everybodies contribution. You can email the MSE webmaster but he doesn't seem interested in fixing broken JavaScript. Boo hoo

DazedByTheLight

Is Islamic slaughter cruel?

The question of how an animal should be slaughtered to avoid cruelty is a different one. It is true that when the blood flows from the throat of an animal it looks violent, but just because meat is now bought neatly and hygienically packaged on supermarket shelves does not mean the animal didn’t have to die? Non-Islamic slaughter methods dictate that the animal should be rendered unconscious before slaughter. This is usually achieved by stunning or electrocution. Is it less painful to shoot a bolt into a sheep’s brain or to wring a chicken’s neck than to slit its throat? To watch the procedure does not objectively tell us what the animal feels.

The scientific facts

A team at the university of Hannover in Germany examined these claims through the use of EEG and ECG records during slaughter. Several electrodes were surgically implanted at various points of the skull of all the animals used in the experiment and they were then allowed to recover for several weeks. Some of the animals were subsequently slaughtered the halal way by making a swift, deep incision with a sharp knife on the neck, cutting the jugular veins and carotid arteries of both sides together with the trachea and esophagus but leaving the spinal cord intact. The remainder were stunned before slaughter using a captive bolt pistol method as is customary in Western slaughterhouses. The EEG and ECG recordings allowed to monitor the condition of the brain and heart throughout.

The Halal method

With the halal method of slaughter, there was not change in the EEG graph for the first three seconds after the incision was made, indicating that the animal did not feel any pain from the cut itself. This is not surprising. Often, if we cut ourselves with a sharp implement, we do not notice until some time later. The following three seconds were characterised by a condition of deep sleep-like unconciousness brought about by the draining of large quantities of blood from the body. Thereafter the EEG recorded a zero reading, indicating no pain at all, yet at that time the heart was still beating and the body convulsing vigorously as a reflex reaction of the spinal cord. It is this phase which is most unpleasant to onlookers who are falsely convinced that the animal suffers whilst its brain does actually no longer record any sensual messages.

The Western method

Using the Western method, the animals were apparently unconscious after stunning, and this method of dispatch would appear to be much more peaceful for the onlooker. However, the EEG readings indicated severe pain immediately after stunning. Whereas in the first example, the animal seizes to feel pain due to the brain starvation of blood and oxygen – a brain death, to put it in laymen’s terms – the second example first causes a stoppage of the heart whilst the animal still feels pain. However, there are no unsightly convulsions, which not only means that there is more blood retention in the meat, but also that this method lends itself much more conveniently to the efficiency demands of modern mass slaughter procedures. It is so much easier to dispatch an animal on the conveyor belt, if it does not move.

Appearances can deceive

Not all is what it seems, then. Those who want to outlaw Islamic slaughter, arguing for a humane method of killing animals for food, are actually more concerned about the feelings of people than those of the animals on whose behalf they appear to speak. The stunning method makes mass butchery easier and looks more palatable for the consumer who can deceive himself that the animal did not feel any pain when he goes to buy his cleanly wrapped parcel of meat from the supermarket. Islamic slaughter, on the other hand, does not try to deny that meat consumption means that animals have to die, but is designed to ensure that their loss of life is achieved with a minimum amount of pain.

amosworks

Thanks for that interesting lesson in copy & paste love. But still I don't seem to see your scientific data.

DazedByTheLight

amosworks wrote:

Thanks for that interesting lesson in copy & paste love. But still I don't seem to see your scientific data.

You are very welcome. Believe it or not, it is not my sole aim in life to please you and the quote was intended to educate those who read the forum.

This may also astound you but the German researchers published their results in German! A translation is available at http://www.mustaqim.co.uk/halalstudy.htm

scheming_gypsy

amosworks wrote:

Thanks for that interesting lesson in copy & paste love. But still I don't seem to see your scientific data.

i don't think we ever will see any until somebody hooks a cow up to some device, measures it's whatever. Then gives it a kick and measures the same whatever to see if it fluctuates with pain.
Once they've worked out which whatever and whereever they need to put it on the cow to measure it's pain threshold they can hook them up to 2 cows and kill them the standard way and the western way to see which registers more pain.


As you can tell i really didn't put a massive amount of effort into the above but you can work out what i'm getting at.