Not Kosher

Yesterday I went to a "talk" if you can call it that, about religious slaughter, and Halal and Kosher laws.
I am an atheist, it's true, and I am not that tolerant of religious viewpoints, but I do understand that Kosher and Halal laws acutally come from a place of sense and reason, and are meant to reduce harm done to animals as well as protect human consumers of meat from harmful bacteria and food poisoning, in desert conditions. I say meant to, as obviously despite best efforts, this is not always the case.

I had it cleared up for me why it is that Halal objects to the stunning of the animal prior to slaughter. Basically, it is that an animal should be healthy and ALIVE (and therefore conscious and walking around) before slaughter. This kind of rule comes from a sensible place as clearly it is not healthy for human beings to eat animals that are unhealthy or have died of "natural"causes. So the rule is that the knife cut itself should be the thing to kill the animal, and not any other thing. Again this makes sense because it means that the animal should have a swift and relatively pain-free death, rather than being bludgeoned about the head and so on. However, this rule is taken so far as to include any kind of damage that actually renders the animal insensible to pain, and in terms of animal welfare, is actually preferable. This would be the first thing I would object to about religious slaughter - the use of "God's rules" when an alternative has been scientifically proven to be better for animal welfare, one of the things these rules were set out to protect in the first place. However, I learned that many Islamic authorities do in fact see it that way, and some do accept stunning as being in harmony with Halal slaughter. Others will accept types of electric stunning which are reversible, as if left, the animal would eventually recover.

In addition to this, the animal should not be able to see the knife, or the animal before it being slaughtered, because these have potential to cause stress, and the knife should be sharp and it should be a single cut, to reduce to potential for pain and suffering. Finally the person committing the slaughter should be a "man of the book" (Islam, Jew or Christian) who is well trained, conscientious and says a short prayer when the animal is killed.

The person I was talking to then said that this was "nice" and that it is "good" to say a prayer thanking the animal for the sacrifice it has made. I say, that from a welfare point of view, it is pretty fucking meaningless, actually. The cow doesn't doesn't really care WHY you are killing it, and whether it is justified or sacrificial, it just cares that you are ending it's life and depriving it of the one thing it desires above all, to survive. While the prayer might be nice for the person, it doesn't make the procedure any less painful, and it doesn't make it any less stressful for the animal.

The thing that really got me was when the guy mentioned a case where a man was forcibly beating a cow to get it to face Mecca. This shit really gets me. If the whole point of Halal slaughter is to treat the animal with respect, as a fellow creature of god, and to reduce the amount of pain, stress and suffering inflicted on it so that you can eat it, beating it so it would face Mecca is kind of missing the point. When I pointed this out, it was suggested to me that my viewpoint was merely the result of my privilege and education. Which I think is complete fucking bullshit. If I, as an atheist on the other side of the world can understand the inherent hypocrisy in that, then why can a "man of the book" who presumably goes to temple every week, not see what he is doing is actually against God's law? I'm sure his religious education is far more in depth than my own. Education has nothing to do with it, it is about compassion, understanding and, as I see it, logic.

It seems to me that the person who called me out on my privilege is actually taking his religious tolerance a step too far and it all came off a bit wishy-washy la-dee-da to me. Oh isn't it nice that they say a prayer, isn't it nice that these traditions exist to preserve the dignity of the animal and prevent unnecessary suffering?

Well, yes, in theory, it is nice. But what really matters, from a welfare perspective, and from the perspective of the animal, is that these rules aren't merely followed without an understanding of WHY, because rules for the sake of rules can be contradictory unless you understand the point of them.

I just want to be clear and say I have nothing against religious slaughter per se (no more than any other kind of slaughter anyway) except possibly for when stunning is outright banned. I can see that these laws came from a sensible place, and parts of them at least, are still applicable now. And I also want to say that I have nothing against Islam in particular (no more than any other kind of religion, anyway), it was just the example at hand. I have a problem with any kind of hypocrisy, it's just that religion in particular seems to be rife with it. Really, any situation which calls for people to blindly follow laws and not understand the reasoning behind them, is dangerous, because evidently, our view of the world changes in light of new knowledge, but religious laws do not. When laws are taken too literally, or directly contradict one another they need to be examined more closely.  This matters not only for the animal, but for all the people who purchase the meat, who think they are accepting a product in accordance with their own beliefs. They would probably be even more upset about this than I am, and rightly so.

I think also that this is unlikely to be the exception and not the rule. I have been to a slaughterhouse that was Halal certified, and it appeared to be more lip service than anything. Their "man of the book" could include any "Christian" (the NZ sense of the term is loose at best, i.e. they put it on their census form but never set foot in a church except for weddings and funerals). They used a captive bolt, which rendered the animal unconscious, and irreversibly damaged the brain. Each animal could see the animal before it being slaughtered. It seems pointless to "certify" something Halal when the definition is so loosely interpreted.

It appears to me that animals suffer more as a result, particularly in cases where stunning is not allowed, in order to produce something which is really not what it says it is anyway.