Posted by blood roses at 7:34pm Jun 28 '11have much bigger issues around animal cruelty than kosher/halal slaughter - killing an animal with a slash of a knife to the throat while the animal is still conscious is nothing on the kinds of things that happen in American factory farming. So for the US or Canada to ban it would be ridiculous.
In general - I'm not convinced that a slash to the throat is substantially more cruel than stunning - it's a pretty quick death. From a religious perspective I struggle with religious laws where you have to obey to the letter because God said so without any effort to understand the spirit of the law - what I mean is, slashing the throat was probably the least cruel method available at the time these laws were written, but now we have stunning so surely God would be ok with that too? And then you end up with things like kosher slaugherhouses where the letter of the law is followed but the spirit is ignore and the animals are treated horrifically. But I digress - I think freedom of religion means there should be a compelling reason to ban kosher/halal slaughter and while I think animal suffering could be considered one if a religious practice involved, say, burning animals alive or tearing them limb from limb, I'm not sure it's warranted in this case.
In general - I'm not convinced that a slash to the throat is substantially more cruel than stunning - it's a pretty quick death. From a religious perspective I struggle with religious laws where you have to obey to the letter because God said so without any effort to understand the spirit of the law - what I mean is, slashing the throat was probably the least cruel method available at the time these laws were written, but now we have stunning so surely God would be ok with that too? And then you end up with things like kosher slaugherhouses where the letter of the law is followed but the spirit is ignore and the animals are treated horrifically. But I digress - I think freedom of religion means there should be a compelling reason to ban kosher/halal slaughter and while I think animal suffering could be considered one if a religious practice involved, say, burning animals alive or tearing them limb from limb, I'm not sure it's warranted in this case.
I think the US (and Canada) - blood roses