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2007/20: Should the ritual slaughter of sheep, in accord with Jewish and Muslim traditions, continue to be allowed?<BR>

2007/20: Should the ritual slaughter of sheep, in accord with Jewish and Muslim traditions, continue to be allowed?

What they said ...
'It appears the animal is not aware that its throat has been cut'
Dr. Temple Grandin, Associate Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University

'The sheep's throats are cut and they are allowed to bleed to death. They are conscious throughout ... You cannot put a dollar figure on cruelty'
Age editorial, August 3, 2007

The issue at a glance
On August 3, 2007, the Victorian Government announced it would investigate whether a Warrnambool abattoir's religious slaughter of sheep breaches Victoria's animal cruelty laws.
Export abattoir Midfield Meats conducts slaughters for Middle Eastern markets by cutting the throats of sheep and allowing them to bleed to death while still conscious.
A special arrangement with the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service allows it to do this. The arrangement is believed to be longstanding.
Under the Australian standard for religious slaughters - both halal and kosher - the animal must be stunned by electric shock immediately before or after the throat is cut. This makes the animal unconscious.
However, there is scope for special arrangements for slaughter without stunning to be made. The Victorian Government will examine whether these exemptions should continue.

Background
The RSPCA has described ritual slaughter without any form of electrical stunning as barbaric and wants it stopped.
Midfield Meats is believed to be the only export abattoir regulated by AQIS to have a special arrangement to conduct ritual slaughter without stunning.
However, Primesafe, the state regulatory body for domestic abattoirs, confirmed there were three domestic abattoirs in Victoria that had similar special arrangements to kill without prior stunning.
The State Government's investigation comes at the same time as Midfield is seeking to expand the practice to cater for a large Israeli lamb contract.
Victorian Minister for Agriculture said a Department of Primary Industries investigation would determine whether the abattoir's practices breached the state's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.
Less controversial variations of halal and kosher slaughter occur at other Australian abattoirs, where animals are rendered unconscious by electric stunning immediately before the throat is slit for halal meat, or immediately after for kosher meat.
However, some Middle Eastern markets will not accept meat as halal or kosher if a

Internet information
On August 3, 2007, the federal Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Peter McGauran, announced an immediate review of the standards and guidelines for the ritual slaughtering of Australian livestock.
"The current arrangements that allow ritual slaughter without stunning were developed by the Commonwealth and States," Mr McGauran said.
"I have directed that the review be undertaken by the Primary Industries Ministerial Council's animal welfare working group to make sure that both State and Commonwealth-administered abattoirs are included.'
The full text of the media release in which Mr McGauran made this announcement can be found at http://www.nationals.org.au/news/default.asp?action=article&ID=3456

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have released a report on the ritual slaughter practices employed at AgriProcessors kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa.
This abattoir employs an unusually crude and stress inducing form of animal restraint and hoists the cattle being killed. It also rips out the animal's trachea as well as cutting its throat.
This report can be found at http://www.goveg.com/feat/agriprocessors/investigator.asp
Please note it includes some footage of animals staggering around after their throats have been cut. Some readers may find this distressing.

The Jewish information site Chabad.org includes a detailed treatment of what constitutes kosher food and other forms of practice required by the Torah. It provides a detailed defence of the traditional Jewish position to ritual slaughter. It describes shechita (the Jewish form of ritual slaughter), who can perform it, why it is practised and whether it is a humane form of slaughter.
An index linking to these different arguments can be found at http://www.chabad.org/library/article.htm/aid/222239/jewish/About-Shechita.html

The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia includes an article titled 'Bans on ritual slaughter' This article looks at bans on ritual slaughter which have been employed historically and current attempts to impose bans in the United Kingdom and the United States.
The full text of this article can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bans_on_ritual_slaughter

On June 15, 2003, The Times Online published an article titled, 'A Stunning Debate'. The article outlines the current debate on ritual slaughter in the United Kingdom. The full text of the article can be found at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,458740,00.html

Arguments supporting the ritual slaughter of sheep
1. The method used to slaughter sheep in accord with Jewish and Muslim traditions is not cruel
Many Jewish spokespeople have claimed there is a significant body of scientific opinion which concludes that shechita [Jewish ritual slaughter practices] causes no suffering, pain or distress for the animal.
Dr. Temple Grandin, Associate Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University conducted a series of experiments in 1994. Dr. Grandin set out to determine whether cattle feel the shechita incision. In one case, the device used to restrain an animal's head during shechita was deliberately applied so lightly that during the incision it could pull its head away from the chalaf. None of the ten animals in the experiment reacted or attempted to pull their heads away leading Dr. Grandin to conclude, 'It appears the animal is not aware that its throat has been cut.'
A similar experiment had been conducted in 1992 on twenty bulls by Dr. Flemming Bager, Head of the Danish Veterinary Laboratory. The research indicated that they too did not react to the shechita incision.
Professor Harold Burrow, one time Professor of Veterinary Medicine, Royal Veterinary College, London, has stated, 'Having witnessed the Jewish method carried out on many thousands of animals, I am unable to persuade myself that there is any cruelty attached to it. As a lover of animals, an owner of cattle and a veterinary Surgeon I would raise no objection to any animal bred, reared or owned by me being subjected to this method of slaughter.'
The method of slaughter used to produce meat products suitable for consumption by devout Moslems is virtually identical to that used to produce kosher products. Similar claims are made about the humane nature of each.

2. Devout Jews and Muslims are unable to eat meat that has not been slaughtered in accord with their traditions
The president of the British Halal Food Authority (HFA) Masood Khawaja has argued that some of the pre-throat-cutting stunning methods proposed for the production of Halal food may not satisfy religious requirements.
Masood Khawaja has indicated that the Koran requires that the animal's blood flows from its body by 'natural convulsion'.
'The post-cut stun would have to be looked at. It may affect the way the blood drains out, we would have to see what happened to the convulsions,' Masoos Khawaja has said. Any slaughter method not clearly endorsed by the Koran would produce meat that could not then be consumed by practising Muslims.
Similar claims have been made by many devout Jews who have argued that if the slaughter methods required to produce kosher meat were to be banned it would make it extremely difficult for Jewish people to live. They would be unable to consume meat products. Thus the only Jews who would be able to live within a community which prohibited ritual slaughter would be those who were prepared to become vegetarians.
The Jewish information site Chabad.org includes the following claims, 'Shechita is the only method of animal slaughter permitted by Jewish law to enable Jews to eat meat and poultry. It is not a dispensable custom or an outdated rite or ceremony, but a divinely ordained Jewish teaching given to Moses on Mount Sinai. It remains applicable in the present day. Without shechita Jews would be forbidden to eat meat and it will therefore always continue to be practised by Jews. It is practical and humane and an integral part of Jewish law.
Jewish laws governing shechita and the animal welfare considerations are to be found in the Talmud (Oral Law of Judaism) Tractate Chullin, Mishneh Torah of Maimonides, the Shulchan Oruch: Yoreh Deah (Codes of Jewish Law) by Rabbi Joseph Karo, of which 28 sections sub-divided into 156 regulations, in addition to commentaries, deal with shechita.'

3. The method used to slaughter sheep in accord with Jewish and Muslim traditions is permitted in many countries
It has been noted that many of the world's most prosperous and well-regulated nations, with elaborate systems of animal protection, allow ritual slaughter. Among the countries which allow ritual slaughter are France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Ireland and Portugal. Spain, meanwhile, allows ritual slaughter for sheep and goats, but not for cattle.
Since 1958, the United States has prohibited shackling and hoisting of cattle without stunning them first. However, an exemption for kosher slaughter was written into the Humane Slaughter Act.

4. All modes of slaughter involve some potential discomfort for the animal
It has been claimed that many of the contemporary slaughter practices used in Western nations are actually less humane that those employed by traditional Jewish and Moslem slaughterers.
In a letter published in The Times Online on June 14, 2003, Michael Gross, Chairman of the British United Synagogue Shechita, stated, 'Anybody who has witnessed both methods of slaughter could not reasonably conclude other than that paralysing (not stunning) an animal by firing (often inaccurately) a bolt into its brain, and then hanging it up by one rear leg and slashing its throat with multiple strokes of an instrument akin to a bread knife, must be far crueller than instantly severing both carotid arteries and the windpipe with a specifically designed knife, honed to incredible sharpness. The latter sensation is no more painful than cutting oneself with the edge of a piece of paper; in the former the animal is merely paralysed and rendered incapable of movement in contrast to shechita, where it is virtually decapitated in a single stroke.
It is recorded in the Old Testament that, when the rest of humanity were still tearing flesh off living animals, animal welfare was enshrined into Jewish law; so it does not behove others to use bogus claims of cruelty to make it impossible for Jewish life to be sustained in the UK.'

5. Many of those opposed to the traditional slaughter practices are prompted by religious or racial prejudice not concern for animal rights
The initial ban on kosher slaughter in modern Europe originated in the late 19th century in 1897 in Switzerland. Later bans were enacted in Bavaria in 1930, and in Norway and Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s. Some claim that these early bans on kosher slaughter stem from anti-Semitism.
The former chief rabbi of Norway, Michael Melchior, has stated that 'one of the first things Nazi Germany forbade was kosher slaughter.'
'One of Hitler's first moves to institutionalize anti-Semitism was to ban all kosher food and anyone caught practicing ritual slaughter was sent straight to a death camp.'
'Significantly, the infamous Nazi "documentary" film Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), designed to sow hatred for Jews, contained a gruesome scene that utterly distorted the way in which animals are killed in accordance with Jewish law, depicting the practice as a barbarous custom in which Jews rejoice at the suffering of animals.'
Recent proposals originating from animal welfare advocates to ban or maintain existing bans on ritual slaughter have attracted noticeable support from people with anti-Jewish and/or anti-immigrant agendas, as the measures can be viewed to be targeting Jewish or Muslim minorities.
In Britain, many Muslims feel that the war on terror has prompted unfair scrutiny of their way of life. They question the motives of the United Kingdom Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) in seeking a ban on ritual slaughter. 'It's most disturbing,' says Aziz Pasha, head of the Union of Muslim Organizations. 'Why are we going through this again?'
The far-right British National Front (NF) party, through offering support to the animal welfare groups in their opposition to the ritual slaughter of animals, was able to target Jews and Muslims.[24] An official NF publication at the time announced, 'All the Jews have to do is stop this barbaric and torturous murder of defenceless animals. When they cease the slaughter the NF will cease its campaign. Until then the NF campaign for animal welfare will continue.'
Similar support was offered to animal welfare groups in the mid-1990s by the successor to the National Front, the British National Party (BNP). A report on anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom from the Israel-based Stephen Roth Institute detailed the familiar tactics of the BNP.
Searchlight, an anti-fascist magazine, wrote in February 2003, describing that the BNP again renewed its opposition to Jewish and Islamic ritual slaughter in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Searchlight gave this description of the party, 'Today's BNP is as Islamophobic as it is anti-Semitic.'

Arguments opposing the ritual slaughter of sheep
1. The method used to slaughter sheep in accord with Jewish and Muslim traditions is cruel
The United Kingdom Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) claims that the method used to produce Kosher and Halal meat, when done without stunning, causes severe suffering to animals slaughtered and should be banned. The method objected to has the throat of the cattle or sheep slashed with the animal still conscious and it is not stunned immediately afterwards.
According to FAWC it can take up to two minutes for cattle to bleed to death. This Council claims is animal abuse. Another animal rights organisation, Compassion in World Farming (CWF), also supported FAWC's recommendation that this form of slaughter be outlawed. CWF has stated, 'We believe that the law must be changed to require all animals to be stunned before slaughter.'
The practice of slaughtering animals without stunning them has also been condemned in Australia. The Age newspaper, in an editorial published on August 3, 2007, stated, 'Under an arrangement with the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, a Warrnambool abattoir, Midfield Meats, is conducting a form of halal ritual slaughter of sheep for export, whereby the sheep's throats are cut and they are allowed to bleed to death. They are conscious throughout ... You cannot put a dollar figure on cruelty. This method of slaughter flouts the accepted international convention that animals should be rendered unconscious and insensible to pain as they are being killed ... Australia has a moral duty to ensure that animals are slaughtered humanely so as to minimise their psychological distress and physical pain. It is no less than a measure of our collective humanity.'
The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has a film of the slaughtering practices used in an abattoir at Postville, Iowa. The film shows the cattle first hoist in the air. Their throats are slashed and their trachea ripped out. The animals are then released and many stagger about for 30 seconds or more before collapsing. PETA and a range of other animal rights activists have condemned such practices as cruel.
There have been many studies to determine the degree and duration of sensibility, consciousness, pain and suffering involved with unstunned slaughter. The time observed for the interval from throat cut to unconsciousness in sheep has varied in those studies from two seconds to 20 seconds. The delay to unconsciousness can be considerably longer if the blood vessels are not successfully cut, or if occlusion occurs-the vessels close before bleeding out is complete.

2. There are modifications that could be made to the traditional slaughter practices that would make it more humane
There are a number of modifications that can be made to traditional slaughter practices that would make the process less distressing for the animals killed. Currently in Australia and elsewhere sheep and cattle are stunned before there throats are cut.
In most abattoirs sheep come along a narrow race to the slaughter area, electric tongs are placed on either side of the sheep's head, and are held there for around two seconds. The sheep is rendered unconscious and the 'stun' will last for around 45 seconds. Electrical stunning itself does not injure the sheep. It is important that the sheep then has its throat cut without delay (after the stun) to ensure it bleeds out prior to the time the sheep would normally regain consciousness. Once 'bled out' the sheep's body is then be hoisted onto a processing line to be skinned, gutted and cut up.
For meat intended for observing Jews, the animal can be stunned immediately after its throat has been cut.
The United Kingdom Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) insists that post-cut stunning would 'significantly benefit cattle, which can remain conscious for up to 90 seconds after the incision'.
The British animal welfare group, Animal Freedom, has stated, 'It would be a good thing to sedate the animals before cutting their throats. In that case it takes 10 to 20 seconds before the animal is completely unconscious as a result of a lack of oxygen ... According to Muslim prescriptions it is important for the sedation to be reversible, because the animal must be alive and appear sound from the outside before slaughter ... Some Imams consider sedation acceptable.'

3. The traditional slaughter method reflects an outdated health concern about the meat produced
It has been claimed that the prescriptions in both Jewish and Muslim sacred texts governing how animals should be slaughtered grow out of concern for hygiene and for animal welfare.
At the time these slaughter methods were decreed they were believed to represent the best method of slaughter for both the people who would subsequently consume the animals' flesh and for the humane slaughter of the animals.
Ms MacCarthy-Clark of the United Kingdom Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) has stated that the FAWC appreciates that these methods have been embedded in religion for thousands of years. Ms MacCarthy-Clark has further noted, 'The rules of both religions are concerned with welfare and hygiene. The method at the time the rules were written was probably the most humane way of killing an animal, but of course that has changed.'
Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok is a professor of Judaism at the University of Wales. He has argued that Jews can live perfectly religious lives without meat, as he has done for the past decade. There's no doubt, he has claimed, that 'Shechita was the most humane form of slaughter' when it developed over a millennium ago, but it is no longer in keeping with 'high ethical principle'.
It has similarly been suggested that the concerns of each religion about animals being completely bled out at the time of slaughter may once have been appropriate in the Middle East where the climate was hot and there was no refrigeration. Now, however, these concerns are excessive. Stunning animals as part of the slaughter process occurs in all countries of the world and there is nothing to suggest that the hygiene of the meat is compromised.

4. Respect for religious rights should not allow animal cruelty to continue
The South African Animal rescue Organisation has stated, 'While animal welfare and rights activists are asked to respect the right to practice traditional animal slaughter customs, those upholding these customs must in return respect the views of those who disagree with their practice.'
From this perspective, it is argued, religious tolerance is not an absolute and no society should automatically have to endorse in the name of religious tolerance practices which it finds unacceptable for other reasons.
In a letter published in The Times Online on June 14, 2003, Keith Griffiths asked, 'Why is it that exemption from currently accepted standards is only offered to holders of deep-rooted religious beliefs?
Beliefs held for social or economic reasons do change, otherwise we should still be executing criminals - perhaps by crucifixion - and sending little boys up chimneys.
Do religious beliefs justify exemption from humanitarian progress?'
Religious tolerance, it is claimed, is not an unchallengeable value. There are some things that should not be tolerated even in the name of religion.

5. There are Jewish and Muslim leaders who reject some aspects of traditional slaughter practices
There are a number of Jewish and Muslim leaders in both Australia and overseas who have rejected some aspects of traditional slaughter practices.
The Australian Federation of Islamic Council (AFIC) has said that Muslims in Australia have no issue with animals being slaughtered in an unconscious state.
AFIC is an organisation that oversees halal meat certification in Australia, and one of its spokespeople has said the slaughter of animals with electrical stunning is acceptable to it.
The Age has quoted AFIC halal services manager, Mohamed Rahman, as saying, 'According to Islam, we have to respect the law of the country.'
Major Jewish spokespeople in the United States have stated, 'The Torah allows shechita, but the Torah does not allow cruel acts to be appended to the prescribed process of kosher slaughter.'
The United States Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism voiced consternation at the cruelty revealed in the slaughtering practices used in an abattoir at Postville, Iowa. In 2000 the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism passed a ruling requiring upright holding pens during shechita.
Most Australian abattoirs electrically stun the animals either immediately before or after the throat is cut. Muslim spokespeople have endorsed the practice of stunning animals immediately before their throats are cut, while Jewish spokespeople have endorsed the practice of stunning animals immediately after their throats are cut.

Further implications
The question of whether the ritual slaughter of animals should to continue to be allowed is less of an issue than it might at first appear, at least within Australia.
Most abattoirs producing meat products for devout Jews and Moslems employ some form of stunning device. In this country, many devout Jews accept the stunning of sheep and cattle immediately after the animals have had their throats cut. Many devout Moslems are prepared to have these animals stunned immediately prior to having their throats cut.
Though there are more extreme believers who will not accept any form of stunning, in Australia, at least, this group appears to be a minority. The issue has surfaced in Australia primarily because a Victorian abattoir is not stunning sheep which it is slaughtering for export to the Middle East. Thus this abattoir appears to be catering for the religious beliefs of citizens of another country, not those within Australia. Therefore the issue appears to have more to do with cultivating a market for an export than it does with respecting another group's religious beliefs.
If Victoria decides to continue to allow the slaughter of animals without stunning a key factor in the decision is likely to be the degree of suffering inflicted on the slaughtered animals. Those who support ritual slaughter without stunning argue that the practice of itself causes rapid and relatively painless death. They argue that animals are only distressed if they have been roughly or inappropriately handled before slaughter and are not gently and firmly restrained in an upright position during and immediately after they have had their throats cut.
It seems likely that a careful investigation of the effect on the slaughtered animals of these traditional slaughter practices.
At a time when both anti-Jewish sentiments and anti-Moslem sentiments are unfortunately common, it is particularly important that any decision which is made is clearly seen to be based on animal welfare concerns, not religious or racial prejudice.

Newspaper items used in the compilation of this issue outline Note that there is no package supplied for this outline.)
Age, August 3, page 12, editorial, `Protecting animals, a measure of our humanity'.
Age, August 3, page 2, news item by Orrietta Guerrera, `Report spurs renewed calls to outlaw live cattle export' (with boxed information on halal, kosher butchery).
Age, August 3, page 1, news item by Lorna Edwards, `Probe into Victorian abattoir where ritual sheep slaughter branded cruel'.
H/SUN, August 7, page 21, comment by Mirko Bagaric, `Pity the poor animals'.
AGE, August 7, page 4, news item by Lorna Edwards, `Halal meat slaughter "obeys law"'.
AGE, August 6, page 5, news item by Lorna Edwards, `VFF concern at halal killing'.
AGE, August 4, page 3, news item by Lorna Edwards, `Religious ritual slaughter faces review'.
AGE, August 13, page 3, news item by Lorna Edwards, `Non-stun killing hurts $10bn industry, says halal exporter'.

Also ...AGE letters, August 4, 2007 (reproduced below)

Blood money

SLICING the throats of conscious, sensitive animals and then allowing them to agonisingly choke to death on their own blood (The Age, 3/8) is barbaric. It must not be allowed to insidiously infiltrate Australia. Nor should our Government "bend" our animal welfare laws by allowing "special arrangements" to be made at certain abattoirs simply to enable them to increase their profits.

With regard to ritual slaughter, Jews and Muslims who favour non-stunning methods of slaughter need to move into the 21st century. If they looked into their hearts, instead of their books, they would realise that a God of love and mercy would never want sensitive beings needlessly subjected to a torturous death. Cruelty is the opposite of love.
Jennifer Moxham, Monbulk

Sadistic streak

AUSTRALIA has standards of conduct for the slaughter of animals for meat production to ensure they do not endure "needless suffering". This sounds reassuring. However, our Agriculture Ministry allows live animals to be exported like cargo in "death ships" to Middle Eastern countries where there are no standards of animal welfare protection.

The halal ritual slaughter of sheep for the Middle East at a Warrnambool abattoir, in which the animals are not stunned but allowed to die slowly, is hardly protection from cruelty. What kind of religion, or benevolent God, requires that animals suffer before being consumed?

It only endorses that humans are capable of being the most violent and sadistic of all species, and that animal suffering is required to enshrine their status as being on top of the food chain.
Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

We're guilty too

THE Age is to be commended for denouncing the slaughtering procedure at a Warrnambool abattoir (Editorial, 3/8). However, I take issue with its claim that "we have laws that are designed to prevent any form of cruelty to them (animals)".

In fact, Victoria's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act exempts practices relating to farm animals by sanctioning "codes of practice" that institutionalise cruelties

such as battery cages, sow stalls and unanaesthetised mutilation. Many of these practices have been banned, or are being phased out, in Britain and the European Union.

Your editorial rightly states that one "cannot put a dollar figure on cruelty". However, the drive for economic efficiency underpins the intensive farming model under which hundreds of millions of Australian animals are killed each year. By focusing only on halal slaughter, your editorial implies that Western animal husbandry and slaughter is humane.
David Glasgow, Heathmont

Feasting on cruelty

I TRUST that all animal lovers who rightly feel anger and disgust at the way animals are slaughtered for religious reasons feel the same way when they eat the meat of a sheep that suffered extreme pain from "mulesing" (the cutting away of flesh from each buttock, without anaesthetic, to prevent flystrike).

When they enjoy their Sunday roast pork or breakfast bacon, are they aware that the pig was castrated, had its teeth clipped, its tail docked and ears notched — all without anaesthetic? Or that the juicy rump steak on their barbecue came from an animal dehorned without anaesthetic? Or that their milk is from a cow that "cried' for days when its newborn calf was taken away to be killed for veal?

The farming and killing of animals for human consumption is barbaric, unjustified and unnecessary for a healthy diet.
Jeff Jordan, Eltham

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