Controversies On Animal Welfare
Detractors of Ḏabīḥah halal, most notably some animal welfare groups, contend that this method of slaughter "causes severe suffering to animals" compared to when the animal is stunned before slaughter. In the United Kingdom, the government funded but independent advisory body Farm Animal Welfare Council recommended that conventional Ḏabīḥah (along with Kosher slaughter (Shehitah)) without prior stunning be abolished. The FAWC chairwoman of the time, Dr Judy MacArthur Clark, said, "This is a major incision into the animal and to say that it doesn't suffer is quite ridiculous". According to Dr Peter Jinman, president of the British Veterinary Association, vets are "looking at what is acceptable in the moral and ethical society we live."Muslims counter this by referring to the problems connected with stunning and the benefits of slaughter without stunning.
The UK Farm Animal Welfare Council says that the method by which Kosher and Halal meat is produced causes severe suffering to animals and it should be banned immediately. According to FAWC it can take up to two minutes for cattle to bleed to death, thus amounting to animal abuse. Compassion in World Farming also supported the recommendation saying "We believe that the law must be changed to require all animals to be stunned before slaughter." The UK government rejected its recommendations.
Various research papers on cattle slaughter collected by Compassion In World Farming mention that "after the throat is cut, large clots can form at the severed ends of the carotid arteries, leading to occlusion of the wound (or "ballooning" as it is known in the slaughtering trade). Nick Cohen wrote in the New Statesman, "Occlusions slow blood loss from the carotids and delay the decline in blood pressure that prevents the suffering brain from blacking out. In one group of calves, 62.5 per cent suffered from ballooning. Even if the slaughterman is a master of his craft and the cut to the neck is clean, blood is carried to the brain by vertebral arteries and it keeps cattle conscious of their pain." Experiments carried out by the principal of the Swedish Veterinary Institute (Veterinärhögskolan') by order of the Swedish government in 1925 and published in 1928 determined that the blood carried to the brain by the vertebral arteries in bovines is reduced after slaughter by the Jewish method schehitah is reduced from 1/30 to 1/40, and on the basis of this and one other experiment Professor Axel Sahlstedt declared the method humane and not cruel. However, on the basis of other experiments that had showed different results, Professor Sahlstedt recommended post-stunning as standard.
Slaughter that uses stunning is not problem free.
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