Farmed
Animal Watch
A Project of Animal Place
June 17, 2003
(To Search This Page Press Ctrl F)
Number #20 Volume 2
CONTENTS
1. Horse Slaughter Effort Dies
2. FAWC Recommends Mandatory Stunning
3. Animal Science & The Holocaust
4. Vegism & Judaism
5. Agricultural Science & Technology Conference, Expo & Opposition
1. HORSE SLAUGHTER EFFORT DIES
Legislative attempts to legalize horse slaughter for human consumption in
Texas have failed. House Bill 1324 passed the Texas House but died in the
Senate. It resurfaced as an amendment
attached to a Senate bill but at the end of May it was removed out of fear it
would kill the bill. Anti-horse slaughter rallies were held throughout the
state and, according to the Texas Humane Legislation Network (THLN,
http://www.thln.com
), many legislators reported receiving more calls on the issue than all other
legislative issues combined. KTSM-TV reported that a statewide poll found 89%
of Texans said they were unaware horses were slaughtered in the state, and 77%
were opposed to changing the law to permit horse slaughter for human
consumption. The two remaining Texas horse slaughterplants, the last in the
country, have been permitted to continue operating until a pending county
lawsuit against one of them goes to trial (see
issue
#86). The lawsuit was
brought after animal rights activists discovered a 1949 state law banning
horse slaughter for human consumption. Together, the two plants kill 50,000
horses a year, primarily for foreign markets. A THLN representative says
slaughtering horses is crueler than slaughtering cattle due to the
excitability of horses and the difficulty in restraining them. Supporters say
they need the plants to humanely dispose of unwanted horses who otherwise
might be neglected or sent to Mexico where they may suffer worse treatment.
Animal handling expert Temple Grandin sees transport as a greater concern.
Most horses are transported to slaughter in trailers designed for cattle in
which they are unable to stand. Many thrash around, injuring themselves and
other horses in transit. A federal law will ban the use of cattle trailers for
horses in 2007. Federal legislation to ban horse slaughter, H.R. 857, is
pending in Congress:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:HR00857:@@@N
2. FAWC RECOMMENDS MANDATORY STUNNING
Slaughter without stunning, as practiced by the Jewish and Muslim faiths,
should be immediately banned in the U.K., according to the Farm Animal Welfare
Council (FAWC). {1} The Council is an independent advisory body funded by the
government to review the welfare of farmed animals during production, transit,
and slaughter. {2} The recommendation was included in the 72-page "Report
on the Welfare of Farmed Animals at Slaughter or Killing," which also
includes recommendations for the handling of animals, mass killing for disease
control, on-farm killing, staff training, slaughterplant equipment, and proper
enforcement. {3} It calls for the phasing out of the use of aversive gases as
a means of stunning pigs, and for restrictions on horned cattle at slaughter.
{4} The report pertains to commonly farmed mammals, deer, wild boar, and
ostriches. The Council will be considering welfare recommendations for
"white meat species" (i.e., chickens and turkeys) over the next
year. {5}
Of the hundreds of millions of farmed animals slaughtered in the U.K. each
year {6}, about 9 million are killed without first being stunned.{7} The
report states: "We are persuaded that such a massive injury [throat
cutting] would result in very significant pain and distress in the period
before insensibility supervenes."{8} FAWC points out that it can take up
to 2 minutes for some of the animals to bleed to death. {9} FAWC chairperson
Dr. Judy McArthur Clark said scientific evidence has enable the Council to
establish "without doubt that there is severe animal suffering."{10}
Members of the Jewish and Muslim communities deny their slaughter methods are
cruel. "The brain is instantaneously starved of blood and there is no
time to start feeling any pain," writes the Muslim Council of Great
Britain. {11} McArthur Clark counters "This is a major incision into the
animal and to say that it doesn't suffer is quite ridiculous." {12} The
religious groups charge that stunning subjects animals to twice the amount of
pain. {13} One rabbi contends, "There can be no doubt that every animal
feels pain from the stunning, and moreover some 14,000 animals a year are
stunned badly or wrongly." {14} Jewish law explicitly requires that
animals must be conscious when slaughtered, while some interpretations of
Islamic law allow for stunning. {15} According to McArthur Clark, already
80-90% of Muslim slaughter a involves electrical stunning, which she says is
acceptable to most Muslims so long as the animals' heart is still beating when
their throat is cut.{16} Nadeem Shaikh, a licensed slaughterer and poultry
wholesaler, says that to expedite slaughter, an amount of electricity is used
that would allow the animal to be able to recover, and as long as a devout
Muslim says a certain prayer it is acceptable - a claim which outrages many
Muslims. (Shaikh mentions a particular Muslim plant where 7,000 chickens an
hour are mechanically killed while a taped prayer is played.) {17} According
to McArthur Clark, 4/5ths of the meat from Muslim slaughter ends up in the
general food supply, so the issue is one of concern to the common consumer.
{18} She says the milder stunning would be acceptable as long as the animal
dies without regaining consciousness. For kosher slaughter, she urges Jewish
authorities to consider electrically stunning animals immediately after
slitting their throat, a practice which is already approved by some rabbis.
{19}
Reform rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok, professor of Judaism at the University of
Wales, says the kosher slaughter method once was the most humane way but is no
longer in keeping with high ethical principle. "It's a pity that this is
what draws the [religious] communities together, saying ‘We want to kill
animals like we've always done,'" he laments. {20} In an op-ed,
philosopher Brian Klug contends that "Whichever method is used, all
animals at the point of slaughter are subjected to a violent act while fully
conscious." He writes that slaughter "is a small part of the total
ordeal we put animals through in the process of turning them into meat."
Klug considers FAWC's recommendation to be culturally-biased and too
problematic. {21} Jewish Vegetarians of North America points out that,
according to slaughter expert Temple Grandin, shackling and hoisting is banned
in the U.K. where restraint systems that minimize pain are instead employed.
Grandin warns that if stunning is mandated, kosher meat might instead be
imported from countries with more inhumane practices {22, (see:
http://www.grandin.com/ritual/rec.ritual.slaughter.html
)} and become increasingly expensive. {23}
In the U.S., Meat Processing Editor Chris Harris considers the report
proposals to be "‘good working practice.'" He says that by
implementing better welfare conditions, industry makes itself more efficient.
He urges the recommendations be recommended for all of Europe, and that they
be adopted industry-wide as a guide but not mandated by law. {24}
The report had been in the making for the past four years. {25} FAWC had
called for an end to slaughter without stunning once before, 17 years ago.
{26} Last year, Switzerland proposed lifting a 19th century prohibition on
ritual slaughter but backed down due to public pressure. {27} Britain's
agriculture ministry is considering FAWC's recommendations. {28} The report
can be accessed at (PDF file):
http://www.fawc.org.uk/reports/slaughter/report.pdf
A Q/A on ritual slaughter can be found at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2977836.stm
See also item #3 below, and item 4 of issue #9.
1, 8, 9, 10, 16, 18, 19: "Ban Urged on Kosher and Halal Butchery,"
Telegraph, Robert Uhlig, June 6, 2003.
http://tinyurl.com/ejgp
or
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/11/nmeat11.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/06/11/ixhome.html
2: "Slaughter Law Proposal Infuriates Two Faiths," The Western Mail,
Patrick Fletcher, 5/19/03.
http://tinyurl.com/ehrh
or
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0300business/0100news/page.cfm?objectid=12971456&method=full&siteid=50082&headline=Slaughter%20law%20proposal%20infuriates%20two%20faiths
3: "Report on the Welfare of Farmed Animals at Slaughter or Killing: Part
I," Farmed Animal Welfare Coalition, June 2003:
http://www.fawc.org.uk/reports/slaughter/report.pdf
4, 5: "Report Recommends End to Slaughter Without Stunning," Meat
News, June 11, 2003
http://www.meatnews.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=PArticle&artNum=5558
6, 13, 28: "Meat Ban Call Unites Muslims, Jews," CNN News, Robin
Oakley, June 13, 2003.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/06/13/britain.meat/
7, 14, 17: "Muslims Unite With Jews to Defend Animal Slaughter
Rites," The Independent, Paul Vallely, June 11, 2003.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=414383
11, 12: "Halal and Kosher Slaughter ‘Must End,'" BBC News, June
10, 2003.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2977086.stm
15, 23: "Britain Set to Deliberate Ban on Kosher Slaughter,"
Forward, Sam Greene, May 29, 2003.
http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.05.30/news9.html
20, 25, 26, 27: "A Stunning Debate," Time Europe, Aisha Labi, June
23, 2003.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901030623-458740,00.html
21: The Animal Welfare Lobby is Wrong," The Guardian, Brian Klug, June
11, 2003.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,974976,00.html
22: Jewish Vegetarian Group Opposes Effort to Single Out Kosher Slaughter for
Banning," Jewish Vegetarians of North America, press release, Richard
Schwartz, June 10, 2003.
24: "Perspective by Chris Harris," Meat News, Chris Harris, June 11,
2003.
http://www.meatnews.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&artNum=5553
3. ANIMAL SCIENCE & THE HOLOCAUST
The current issue of Tikkun, the liberal "bimonthly Jewish critique of
politics, culture and society," features an article by Charles Patterson,
author of Eternal Treblinka (see N.7, V.2). In "The Great Divide: Animals
and the Holocaust," which begins with a quote by Sigmund Freud, Patterson
offers an explanation of why people may be so desensitized to the suffering
and death of other humans. He attributes it to the domestication of animals,
noting "This domination, control, and manipulation of animals served as
the model for the enslavement/domestication of people." Patterson tells
how slaughterline principles were applied in Nazi death camps. He explains how
selective breeding practices employed with plants and nonhuman animals were
attempted with humans in eugenics programs, described by the leader of the
American eugenics movement as "the science of the improvement of the
human race by better breeding." Castration and killing programs in
America and Germany targeted criminals and other people considered to be
defective and undesirable. "By the summer of 1942," Patterson
writes, "Auschwitz was a vast, full-service Eugenics center for the
improvement of animal and human populations...." He gives examples of the
agricultural background and education of key German officials involved in the
Holocaust. Patterson concludes: "Our detachment and indifference toward
[other animals'] fate makes us more inclined to commit atrocities against each
other....We need to eradicate the notion that there exist in the world groups
of sentient beings not entitled to our empathy and protection. Extending the
circle of our compassion to include all living beings will make the world a
safer and more humane place. It's the only thing that will." The article
is on-line at:
http://tinyurl.com/eie3
or
http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0305/article/030526a.html
A commentary by Stephen R. Dujack, grandson of Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis
Singer who fled Nazi Europe, was published in The Los Angeles Times and other
newspapers in April. Dujack defends comparisons of the way farmed animals are
treated with the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust. "Animals
Suffer a Perpetual ‘Holocaust'" is on-line at:
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0403/25special_dujack.html
See also N.7, V.2.
4. VEGISM & JUDAISM
The May/June issue of Tikkum (see item #2 above) also contains a section
entitled "The Politics of Eating." It consists of an article
entitled "18 Reasons Jews Shouldn't Be Vegetarians (and Why They're
Wrong)" by Richard H. Schwartz, and an essay entitled "Why I am
Vegan" by Jeffrey M. Freedman. Among the questions Schwartz answers are
two pertaining to ritual slaughter (see item #1 above). Freedman explains
that, for him, veganism "is a prayer, a petition asking why animals and
people suffer greatly in a Universe created by a benevolent and loving
G-d....[it] is not so much about dietary abstinence as it is about spiritual
sustenance; spiritual sustenance that fills the dark and empty spaces I feel
lost in when I witness animal and human suffering, or anything that is an
affront to what is Holy or good in the world. It is a lifestyle imperative
that flows from my love of animals and reverence for life." Schwartz's
article is on-line at:
http://tinyurl.com/eiff
or
http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0305/article/030526b.html
and Freeman's is at:
http://tinyurl.com/bp33
or
http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0305/article/030526c.html
5. AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, EXPO & OPPOSITION
Sacramento, Ca. will be the site of a June 23-25th Conference and Expo on
Agricultural Science and Technology. The conference theme is "the
critical role science and technology can play in raising agricultural
productivity in developing countries in an environmentally sustainable way to
alleviate world hunger and poverty." More than 150 ministers representing
over 100 countries have registered to attend the conference, which is only
open to invited delegates. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman will deliver
the keynote address and participate in meetings. International organizations,
universities, research centers and non-governmental organizations will also be
represented. According to Corpwatch, which "counters corporate-led
globalization through education, network-building and activism," the Expo
"will promote an industrialized, hunger inducing, agricultural
model." The organization is calling on animal rights activists and others
to help counter the event. A teach-in, rally and march are planned. The
conference web site is:
http://www.fas.usda.gov/icd/stconf/conf_main.html
