#humane slaughter

[plant--based--bitch]

I did not live through the propaganda of “humane slaughter” just for y’all to try “ethical AI.”

That’s not a thing. Neither of those are things. They’re fairytales to make you feel better. Stop it.

[acti-veg]

I don't understand the gotcha of "traditional farming practices" being better for the animal. My grandma grew up on a traditional homestead in my county. She was forced to slaughter her own rabbits, animals she named and cared for and she still can't eat their meat now 50 years later. Even when the animals were kept at her home, the rabbits were in tiny wire cages. That's traditional, self-reliant, close to the home meat. Even then in the end the animal is still killed, what do a few weeks of a nicer life change?

I think that the majority of people vastly overestimate the number of traditional family farms there are, and have no real conception of how animals raised in these farms are treated or how they’re slaughtered. This notion of the traditional farmer chewing on a piece of straw and looking after his dozen or so cows with his son has been vanishingly rare for at least 20 years. Almost none of our meat comes from places like this anymore.

Even when it was widespread, it didn’t look how people imagined it did. It is telling that this objection tends to come from people who have very little knowledge or experience of what farming animals looks like now, even on the few family farms that are still left. Farmers aren’t all evil capitalists, but it just isn’t profitable to raise animals to the welfare standards that most people imagine are already in place.

[vegandude74]

[strangebiology]

The Science of Humane Slaughter

I asked an expert on humane livestock slaughter how we decided on certain methods of slaughter as more or less humane than others, from a scientific perspective.

He pointed me to this document (PDF) from the European Food Safety Authority called “WELFARE ASPECTS OF ANIMAL STUNNING AND KILLING METHODS:” Scientific Report of the Scientific Panel for Animal Health and Welfare on a request from the Commission related to welfare aspects of animal stunning and killing methods.

It's long, and old (from 2004) but it's a pretty useful document summarizing a lot of the science of why certain methods of killing may be more or less humane.

You can test a method, for example, by hooking an animal up to an EEG and monitoring its brainwaves after stunning it, or delivering a fatal blow (functionally killing it, but it won't always die instantly following a fatal injury, so you can still monitor it.)

Other ways of monitoring and measuring suffering include recording: how many times does an animal vocalize (moo, grunt etc) after being put in a chute? If it moves, does that matter, or is that a post-mortem or unconscious spasm? Does it immediately collapse, does it blink when you touch its eye (corneal reflex)? Is the animal permanently brain-damaged (which is a good thing when you want it to die fast!) or is it only a little knocked out and immobile, with the potential for recovery if you were to not bleed it out? (Which is bad in that circumstance!) A scientist can test that by testing a stunning method on a group of animals and then seeing if they recover. Those individual animals are likely not happy if they do return to consciousness with a hole in their heads, but such is science.

Anyway, while the testing might sound gruesome, I thought you'd like to know that slaughter regulations are pretty serious and well-studied. And those regulations seem pretty consistent among everywhere I've seen (EU, Norway specifically, the US.) With some minor differences here and there.

Perhaps we will discover better ways to slaughter meat animals in regard to their welfare, or perhaps we will find one day that our preferred method wasn't as good as we thought! There might also be people doing things in very bad, unintentionally cruel ways because of silly, disproven myths (but, if someone is legally selling meat, any US slaughterhouse is required to have a USDA rep see every death.)

I don't want to imply that every animal death goes perfectly well, or that it's even acceptable, or that the meat industry is perfect or good! But I do want to share that there is scientific precedent for why people kill livestock the ways they do, and you can read the studies in the aforementioned document. There are tons.

PS. If you have any interesting insights on the science of humane slaughter, I'd love to see them! Or, even, just tell me how it's done in your country, the role of the government, etc.

[devoted1989]

Image with kind permission from Dina Farris Appel.

@dina_appel_art

[nerdykeith]

When it comes to vegan activism, obviously first and foremost it’s about the animals. But there are a lot of really bad anti-vegan arguments, fallacies if you will.

One of the worst I have come across is this idea of “humane slaughter”. This is not something that can truly be a thing. It would be the equivalent of a wanted criminal kidnapping another human being, pampering them and basically treating them like royalty while within their captivity. Then murdering them once they have fulfilled their usefulness. The said hypothetical criminal may even call it a humane murder. But no matter how many pretty terms we use, it doesn’t alter the reality of the brutality.

There is no such thing as humane slaughter, no more than one can humanely murder a human. We should have equal compassion for human beings and other animals

[vegan-and-sara]

There’s Nothing "Humane" About Killing Pigs in Gas Chambers

CO2 gassing is standard practice among the world’s largest pork producers, but not because it’s more humane, as the industry promises.

For any living being, pig or human, inhaling high concentrations of CO2 is like being burned from the inside out. With each panicked hyperventilation, the pigs draw the toxic fumes deeper into their bodies, simultaneously suffocating from the lack of oxygen and convulsing violently from the abrasive poison being pumped into their lungs.

The majority of large-scale pork producers around the world use the CO2 stunning method, claiming it is more “humane” than stunning animals with an electric prod.

The CO2 stun itself can take up to a minute. Pigs are herded into metal cages and then lowered into gas chambers, where they are gassed for roughly 90 seconds. The pigs cling to the cold metal cage, conscious for anywhere from 15-60 seconds and writhing in agonizing pain.

[necessaryveganism]