Religious Slaughter: Promoting a Dialogue about the Welfare of Animals at Time of Killing

Abstract

Both the Muslim and Jewish faiths have specific rules for the method of killing religiously acceptable nonhuman animals. Animal slaughter without stunning prior to cutting the throat for the production of food suitable for consumption for Muslim and Jewish people, called religious slaughter, has been a contested issue for a long time in Europe (see Vialles, 1994). When the method of electrical stunning was first introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century, this contested issue led to a “science versus religion” war about the animals’ pain and consciousness at time of killing. Electrical stunning of animals prior to slaughter was welcome and widely accepted, according to Burt (2001), because it addressed issues of civilized, or humane, behaviour and technology that were important to the meat industry. The first scientific textbook for the meat industry, by Leighton and Douglas (1910), described the goal of the industry as producing the optimum amount of meat of the best quality in the shortest time (Burt, 2001, p. 87ff ), and indicated that from about 1927, introduction of electric stunning before slaughter presented new possibilities for achieving such a goal. This new method of stunning presented options of efficiency, low cost, and hygiene as well as the possibility of meeting animal welfare considerations. It also seemed a win-win technology that could be operated with relatively little skill compared to, say, wielding a poleaxe. In the words of Muller (1932), one of its pioneers, the technology indicated “the higher standard of modern civilization” (p. 487, cited in Burt, 2001). However, this technology was strongly rejected by the Jewish communities, which took issue with injuries to the animals prior to having their throats cut and claimed that the Jewish method of slaughter, shechita, was already addressing animal pain and was ensuring animals’ unconsciousness with the simple cut of the throat. This claim was based on the thorough training of the