In the United States, slaughter is governed by the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA), discussed above, which makes it "the policy of the United States that the slaughtering of livestock and the handling of livestock in connection with slaughter shall be carried out only by humane methods." Despite its welfare-oriented title, the language of the HMSA indicates the law was motivated mainly by food and worker safety concerns...
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When the HMSA was enacted, most animals covered by the law (including cows) were killed in the following way: first, the animal's rear legs were shackled with handcuff-type restraints. The animal was then raised by cables attached to those shackles and suspended upside down, head pointed towards the floor. (The animals are hoisted for sanitary purposes in order to keep their bodies, which will eventually be turned into meat, from mixing with the fluids that collect on slaughterhouse floors.) The animal was then slaughtered with a quick cut of the carotid artery, which leads to death within seconds. When an animal is hoisted, her weight may force hip dislocation, and conscious animals may struggle in terror and pain while hanging upside down, causing them to swing erratically in a way that endangers workers as well as causing immense pain to the animal.
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With that in mind, and presumably understanding the pain and terror of the shackling and hoisting process, the HMSA's first provision requires that the animal be "rendered insensible to pain by a ... means that is rapid and effective, before being shackled, hoisted, thrown, cast, or cut." This is usually accomplished by a "captive bolt gun." The gun plunges a metal bolt, attached to the gun, into the brain of the animal and, if correctly used, will cause unconsciousness in the animal. If the process does indeed render them unconscious, the animals are unable to feel pain, fear, or stress, and if the rest of the process is followed, are killed very shortly after the captive bolt procedure. Animal advocates have raised serious concerns, however, that in practice, slaughter causes immense suffering. Slaughter workers report having to use the captive bolt gun as many as ten times before a cow collapses into unconsciousness. And many "stickers," the workers who slit cows' throats, often receive cows at their stations who are still conscious and moving.
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Paradoxically, slaughter of animals has also been declared to be humane under subsection (b) of the HMSA even if animals are not rendered unconscious before they are shackled and hoisted as long as the animals are slaughtered "in accordance with the ritual requirements of the Jewish faith or any other religious faith." Although not expressly mentioned in the statute, "kosher slaughter" the ritual slaughter carried out under Jewish law requires that an animal be fully conscious when she is slaughtered. Thus, this section of the statute declares that it is humane to hoist and shackle animals without rendering them insensible to pain based on the recommendations of religious leaders who testified before Congress during the writing of this law. Despite the apparent desire in section (a) of the statute to ensure that animals are insensible to pain, section (b) approves a situation in which the animals are fully aware of all the events leading up to their death.
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In 1974, in one of the American animal law movement's first lawsuits, plaintiffs challenged the aspect of the HMSA that effectively provides an exemption to the requirement that animals must be rendered unconscious before being shackled and hoisted. The plaintiffs in Jones v. Butz argued that section (b) violated both the purpose of the law (to provide humane methods of slaughter) and the federal First Amendment, which prohibits the government from either establishing a religion or interfering with an individual's free exercise of her own religious beliefs. The court rejected these arguments because Congress had held hearings and made a factual determination- which the court refused to question- that kosher slaughter (which prohibits the slaughter of unconscious animals) was "humane." Unwilling to contradict the findings of the legislature, and finding no conflict with the requirement that church and state be separate (because the secular purpose of "humane slaughter" was being satisfied), the court upheld the law.
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Like the ostensible requirement in the U.S. law, "[m] ost developed and many developing countries have legislation that requires pre-slaughter stunning."^ The European Union has adopted similar requirements, with similar exceptions to the American law: animals must be rendered insensible unless a "religious rite" requires otherwise. This requirement is not universal; one study indicated that as many as half of the animals slaughtered in "developing" countries are not stunned before slaughter. Thus, between the exception under many laws for kosher and ritual slaughter, and other countries that do not even have a stunning requirement, billions of animals annually are hoisted and shackled and slaughtered while fully conscious. And as a matter of practical application, they are also forced to watch the slaughter of many other animals who are being killed at the same time. Finally, even when animals are stunned, the methods may still cause animal suffering, as when manual percussive means are used, such as sledge hammers or poleaxes.
A Worldview of Animal Law - Bruce A. Wagman and Matthew Liebman (2011) on the killing of cows in animal agri.
[I wanted to do some research on kosher slaughter before posting this bc the arbitrariness of US law seemed crazy to me. I was interested to know why it was Jewish tradition for animals to be conscious when they're killed and what the welfare standards around that were. So I opened 10 tabs on the subject, as usual. The first from a Jewish vegetarian discussing how the Jewish religion has had historically good animal welfare standards and that consciousness had historically allowed them to determine that animals were well treated and not diseased. I gave up after my next tab, an article by Temple Grandin on kosher slaughter, started discussing how it was a welfare concern that cows who are shackled and hung upside down and who then have their throats slit may then aspirate their own blood, as they continue breathing until they bleed out. And after that I didn't really want to know more. ]
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