: : Charles wrote:
: : >> Selling Kosher/Halal meat in the UK might make McDonald's
: : >> claims regarding humane slaughter looks even more unrealistic. : The implication of this statement is very clear. You are saying that Kosher
: and Halal meat is somehow *less* humane than secular methods of slaughter.
: Otherwise, the inclusion of such meat would not affect the realism of
: McDonalds' humane slaughter claims. You may not understand why your claim is
: racist and offensive to Jews and Muslims, but believe me, it is.
I think it's well scientifically accepted that it's less humane to kill an animal without prior stunning than if an animal is stunned. I don't really see how you can argue against this.
I also don't see how you can call it a racist statement, particularly as somebody's religion is their choice, it's a set of beliefs, it's different to your race which you are born with and you can't choose. That doesn't mean it's ok to persecute people for their religious beliefs, but if those religious beliefs encourage oppression of other people or animals then I'm sorry, but to me the rights of those other people and animals come first.
For centuries far too many people in the world have used religion as an excuse for killing, torture, dispossession and other forms of oppression. Be they Christian missionaries stealing aboriginal children from their mothers, Muslim men forcing women to cover themselves up and be treated as property of the men, Jewish groups brutally evicting Palestinians, whatever, the list is endless. It's all wrong and no amount of religious tract can justify it.
Everyone, of whatever religion (or none), has to stop and think, 'would I like to be treated in the same way?' and if the answer is 'no' then you shouldn't do it to someone or something else and use religion as an excuse.
: The various animal welfare regulations in secular slaughter-houses do not have
: the same kind of binding effect on the status of the meat that the religious
: requirements of Kashrut and Halal have. That is why Kashrut and Halal
: slaughter methods are less inhumane. In a secular slaughterhouse, where an
: animal happens to die in agony, its meat can still be sold. In a Kosher or
: Halal slaughterhouse, if a cow, say, should die in agony due to a mistake on
: the part of the slaughterer, its meat would not be religiously sanctioned for
: food and as far as Jews and Muslims are concerned, that cow might as well be
: a pig - ie not Kosher, not Halal, and neither Jews nor Muslims would eat it.
I don't suppose the cow is that bothered if it is eaten or not after being slaughtered. What it is worried about is the fact it is being slaughtered at all, and if it is conscious all through the slaughter then the pain it feels must last a lot longer.
: : Where is the evidence that these animals die instantly and do not suffer.
: You are casting some serious aspersions here on the religious practices of
: cultures you neither know of nor understand. The evidence that these animals
: die instantly and do not suffer is deeply embedded in the mothods of ritual
: slaughter themselves, which I have explained. Re-read the bit below:
I read all the bits below that you had written and the only one i could see that was any kind of argument (as opposed to just being 'it's done in the name of religion therefore they don't suffer' - which to me just doesn't follow) was this one:
: Judaism takes the same view that it is basically wrong to kill animals for
: food, but people still do it, so humane ritual slaughter methods have been
: developed. The reason that stunning is not part of ritual slaughter is that it
: provides a false sense of security with regard to the pain felt by the animal,
: and as you rightly point out, the stunning process does not always work.
This I thought was quite interesting, the false sense of security of pre-stunning is probably true, but it comes from the knowledge that without stunning the animals definately do feel pain. So at the end of the day, the ritually slaughtered animals must feel the same pain. If as you say (and as I am pleased to say I have heard before) Judaism takes the view that it is basically wrong to kill animals for food, yet people still do it, why can't they similarly ignore whatever religious edict it is that says there can't be pre-stunning.
Personally I think it would be a whole lot simpler and more humane to just give up the meat, but I don't follow why it's ok to ignore some religious edicts and not others? (That's if the no-stun edict really exists - from what I've read there's quite a lot of dispute about that within the respective religions themselves).
Wayne, please don't think that hatred or intolerance were my motives in writing this, I have no hatred of you or anyone else with different beliefs to my own. My motives are solely wanting to see the end of suffering of all people and animals. It's very easy if you have been brought up with a specific set of beliefs (a religion) to accept them as unquestionable truths. But at the end of the day they are just a set of beliefs, nothing more nothing less.
Why is it that around the world different countries and regions have different gods, but all of them believe that theirs is the only true god? That the god we believe in will almost certainly be the one our parents believed in and the one our school believed in. Don't you think this smacks just a bit of indoctrination? perhaps even brainwashing?
Wouldn't it be nice if we all threw off the shackles, and just got on together with creating a better world here and now, without killing, violence, greed, division and exploitation?
