Denmark bans religious slaughter

[boyfriday]

You are wrong and your argument is born out of a wish to defend rather than a wish to protect.

What am I wrong about? What am I defending? Im placing all activities involving the slaughter of animals on the same level-I'd previously believed in pre-stunning (as I've said previously on here), but my view is more relaxed now. Are you a meat eater?

We have a law in the UK that requires meat slaughtered to be pre-stunned. Its there for a reason under advise of British experts. Two religious groups are exempt while the rest of us are forced to adhere to the law or be prosecuted. This is unacceptable. No one should be able to ignore certain laws just on the basis they disagree on religious grounds!

..and yet you continue to miss my point. This only became a subject for 'popular' discussion once those with an anti Muslim agenda got hold of it, otherwise the papers would have been full of this regarding Kosher slaughter which has only been conflated into the pre-stunning argument because it's an easy sacrifice for non Jews to make in order to beat Muslims.

You have no evidence that conventional slaughter does not respect the animal or that it does not acknowledging the anxiety of the animal.

Again, displaying a complete lack of understanding of the two methods. In conventional slaughter the animals for slaughter witness the slaughter of their cohorts, in Islamic slaughter they don't, because Muslims believe it creates stress in the animal-that's their concern for welfare-whether it does or not I've no idea. My point is not to defend halal methods, but you can see how a Muslim slaughter man might regard our methods as barbaric and they would argue until theyre blue in the face defending their position, just as you are, btw the research does acknowledge the stress in pre slaughter animals by witnessing their fellows being slaughtered.

I can safely say that any employee working in these industries would disagree with your statement.

So how do they accommodate the stress anxiety of livestock being slaughtered (which was my point)?

Tell me, have you ever worked in a slaughter house?

No, have you?

My father did for sometime and I have been inside slaughter houses in the past. I have also been in slaughter houses that cater for the Halal and Kosher markets.

Have you ever had your throat cut, been electrocuted or had a captive bolt fired into your head?

They are no different to conventional slaughter houses.

I don't recall suggesting they were, however the methods in which the animals are treated are.

So please stop with your armchair expertise and give up on your wish to defend the indefensible, its idiotic!

 

Perhaps you could confine your rhetoric to the discussion at hand?

 

---------- Post added 18-02-2014 at 17:17 ----------

 

Excellent article here from the New Stateman, May 2012

 

"Halal Hysteria"

[feederfil]

I may be wrong but I was lead to believe that by slitting the throat ,this was to enable the blood to drain out. This was necessary in the hot countries to stop the meat going off. Now we have fridges does this practice still need to be enforced. Is this another belief that should be brought into the 21st century in countries that have fridges.

[boyfriday]

I may be wrong but I was lead to believe that by slitting the throat ,this was to enable the blood to drain out. This was necessary in the hot countries to stop the meat going off. Now we have fridges does this practice still need to be enforced. Is this another belief that should be brought into the 21st century in countries that have fridges.

 

All slaughtered livestock is 'bled out', even conventionally slaughtered, it's a common misconception that it only applies to ritually slaughtered meat.

[janlizzy]

I may be wrong but I was lead to believe that by slitting the throat ,this was to enable the blood to drain out. This was necessary in the hot countries to stop the meat going off. Now we have fridges does this practice still need to be enforced. Is this another belief that should be brought into the 21st century in countries that have fridges.

 

You would not eat meat that has not been bled and hung for the required time.

[charmer]

As long as they also ban battery farming, branding and other forms of animal mistreatment.

 

However, I don't see the OP calling for that, I wonder why not?

 

What would you rather endure? A life frolicking where you want but ended by your throat being slit? Or a life stuck in a cage with not enough room to stretch ended by a bolt through the brain?

[milquetoast1]

Why do discussions about non-stunned religious slaughter always descend into the same two irrelevances?

 

1. Eating meat is immoral. If you eat meat you have no grounds to discuss how the animals are slaughtered.

 

2. Animals that are allowed to frolic and then have their throats cut, are treated with much more compassion than animals that are stuck in a cage and then stunned before slaughter.

 

Both are worthy of discussion on their own, but irrelevant here.

 

The days when we could all keep livestock in our own field, give them names and care for them are long gone. We have the choice of ensuring the meat we eat is from high welfare farming, but this costs up to 10 times more, so is not a choice available for all of us. Perhaps we should eat less meat. All worthy of discussion, but irrelevant here.

 

As a society we have decided that it is okay to eat meat. As a society we have decided that intensive agriculture is the best way of feeding 70 million people.

 

Within this context, comparing nice high welfare farming that results in religious slaughter with intensive farming that does not is a strawman argument. Most of our meat is the result of intensive farming, whether religiously slaughtered or not.

 

The only relevant issue is should we allow religious exemptions from animal welfare laws? Denmark thinks not.

[aliceBB]

Well said.

[boyfriday]

Why do discussions about non-stunned religious slaughter always descend into the same two irrelevances?

 

1. Eating meat is immoral. If you eat meat you have no grounds to discuss how the animals are slaughtered.

 

2. Animals that are allowed to frolic and then have their throats cut, are treated with much more compassion than animals that are stuck in a cage and then stunned before slaughter.

 

Both are worthy of discussion on their own, but irrelevant here.

 

The days when we could all keep livestock in our own field, give them names and care for them are long gone. We have the choice of ensuring the meat we eat is from high welfare farming, but this costs up to 10 times more, so is not a choice available for all of us. Perhaps we should eat less meat. All worthy of discussion, but irrelevant here.

 

As a society we have decided that it is okay to eat meat. As a society we have decided that intensive agriculture is the best way of feeding 70 million people.

 

Within this context, comparing nice high welfare farming that results in religious slaughter with intensive farming that does not is a strawman argument. Most of our meat is the result of intensive farming, whether religiously slaughtered or not.

 

The only relevant issue is should we allow religious exemptions from animal welfare laws?

Another relevant issue is what's suddenly motivated this interest in banning religiously slaughtered meat.

Denmark thinks not.

I wonder what excuse they'll use to beat Muslims with in the future.

 

Read this

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/05/halal-hysteria

 

---------- Post added 19-02-2014 at 07:49 ----------

 

Why do discussions about non-stunned religious slaughter always descend into the same two irrelevances?

 

1. Eating meat is immoral. If you eat meat you have no grounds to discuss how the animals are slaughtered.

 

This isn't an irrelevancy, the methods of slaughter should be properly debated because many objectors believe commercially slaughtered stunned meat somehow arrives at their plate without pain, trauma and disconnected from the beast it derived from, yet non stunned is 'barbaric & cruel'.

 

Personally I believe neither method can ever be 'humane' (as the objectors claim pre-stunning is), it's a vile, cruel enterprise and making an issue of stunning over non stunning is like making an issue of whether you prefer an ingrowing toenail to a bunion, whilst you're suffering from cancer.

[lotar]

Nothing to do with anti this or that, we live in the 21st century and cutting an animals throat while its alive it inhumane.. we dont live in caves anymore..

[melthebell]

more anti Islamic intolerance, nothing to do with animal suffering