To serve kosher meat just to spite them?

[flaquark]

I think I might be being a tad silly but..

A few of DH's work collegues are coming over for sunday dinner (with their families) tomorrow. We did all the making sure about veggies and allergies and all that.
I got a text from one of them saying that they were looking forward to coming and all that and they added on the end that could we not serve any kosher meat tomorrow as they dont agree with it.
Both me and DH dont keep kosher, at all, never have.

For some reason the text really pissed me off, and I really want to go and buy different meat that is all kosher.

I'm being ridiculous aren't I?

Annie - lama lo tov ma'od already??

I can't keep up, agnostic Masorti, Orthodox Atheists? Oyyyyyy!

I've had a quick look for papers.

This one, which studies the time to final collapse in ritually slaughtered animals is interesting, and shows that 85% of animals reached final collapse within 10 seconds. However, I would have preferred to see the study include times for final collapse in captive bolt slaughter as a direct comparison - the results are not really meaningful on their own, and I couldn't find a comparable study on time to final collapse in stunned animals.

This is a very comprehensive review of the halal and kosher slaughter process (as well as non-ritual captive bolt/electrocution). It references two papers that apparently state that in animals where the throat is correctly slit, the animal shows no reaction, and that concluded that "shechita is a painless and humane method of animal slaughter", but I couldn't actually access either of them. They are:

T. Grandin, J.M. Regenstein 1994 Religious slaughter and animal welfare: A discussion for meat scientists, Meat Focus International pp. 115–123

S.D. Rosen 2004 Physiological insights into Shechita
The Veterinary Record, 154, 759–765

What has struck me while briefly looking at what studies have been done, there's lots of be found on levels of suffering in ritual slaughter, but not much at all on general pre-stun methods. On first impressions, the folk who employ ritual slaughter are investing a lot more time and effort into making sure that their method is as humane as possible than anyone else. This may be because they have the burden of proof that their method is as humane as any other, or it may be from genuine compassion. It's impossible to know, I suppose.

Ha, cadamom, seems we found the same paper!!

Frankly, I'm stunned that I can't access it from my uni login, but since I work in a veterinary institute, I should be able to access it from work tomorrow.

I did find a full text version of Grandin and Regenstein, and it seems somewhat amateurish, to put it kindly. But Vet Record is a well-respected journal so I'd be very interested to read Rosen's work.

This is an excellent piece in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics on the ethics of kosher slaughter.

SheherazadeSchadenfreude - sorry, not ignoring you. Ani beseder gamur, aval ktzat lo beseder be'rosh. Toda she'shalt.

(apologies to everyone else for the rudeness of forrin-ing all over the trhead)

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Another point to make is that if shechita is 'botched', as evidenced by a less than absolutely clean and single cut, then the animal is not considered kosher and cannot be sold via kosher butchers. This would result in a financial hit. So it is in the shochet's interests to ensure that slaughter is carried out perfectly. There are rules in place as to the maximum number of animals per hour that a shochet is permitted to slaughter, precisely to ensure that he doesn't cock it up by rushing. For similar reasons, he must inspect his knife after a certain number of animals to ensure it remains razor sharp.

I'm not saying that a single clean cut doesn't rule out every possibility of mucking it up in some way or another (prior to making the cut). However, the analogous scenario with stunning where an animal may receive more than shot before the stun is successful, could not happen with shechita. It has to be a single, clean cut that severs everything.

...more than one shot before the stun is successful...

I bet the OP wasn't expecting this when she first posted, huh?

Cardimonger
There are rules in place as to the maximum number of animals per hour that a shochet is permitted to slaughter, precisely to ensure that he doesn't cock it up by rushing

I think that is a very interesting fact. All the abattoirs that I worked at years ago use to process the animals incredibly quickly. The slaughter-men were paid per head so it was in their interest to go at lightening speed. It never ceased to impress me but i am sure it must have contributed to the occasional mistake. I am sure that having a limit on the maximum throughput would result in less mistakes.

cardamomginger. Sorry that I got your name wrong

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I have no idea what the numbers are though. Can probably find out. Suspect it varies according to species. Chickens 'easier' than cows kind of thing. Dunno.

Also, these guys are really highly trained and, even though they are killing animals, they do take animal welfare seriously. Again, there are all sorts of things that would mean an animal is not kosher - if they have signs of injury or illness, then they are not kosher. After they are slaughtered, the bodies are inspected to check for this. So again, quite apart from any ethical considerations, it doesn't make economic sense to muck about with the animals and cause them injury through carelessness prior to slaughter.

As far as I am aware, there is nothing comparable in 'mainstream' slaughtering - if an animal is injured, it may be unfortunate, but no one is going to lose any money over it (scenarios where the RSPCA are called in and they are shut down for piss poor practice aside!).

I never witnessed any animal cruelty when the animals were being killed in any of the abbatoirs I worked in. The slaughter men (yes, they were all men, I was the only female) were too busy working to mess about.

The guys who herded the animals from the holding pens or lorries could be a bit impatient and rough at times although not deliberately 'cruel'.
I believe that it's not good for the meat if the animals are unduly stressed.

I just can't imagine what kind of person would want to work in an abattoir

itsbetter - I have more respect for someone who works in an abattoir and looks the meat they eat in the eye than someone who buys any old thing from the supermarket shelves without a thought for where it came from.

I don't have respect for either
Meat eaters are disgusting.

I worked in abattoirs as part of my training for about a year. It was fascinating and I came away with the upmost respect for the slaughtermen. I have yet to see anyone else work as hard as they did. I wouldn't have wanted to work there permanently but I actually enjoyed it at the time. I worked in smallish regional abbatoirs many of which have now closed to be replaced by huge central 'factories'

It didn't put me off meat at all although I still prefer not to eat veal or non free range pork or chicken.

It is (or was when I was there) a hugely physical job and you end up with muscles on your muscles I definitely didn't need to go to the gym.

Very interesting, and thank you for those links. I read through in particular the 2013 Farouk paper. He refers to many studies, but mainly I think a 1994 study by Grandin, and later work by Rosen and by Zivotofsky, which others have also referenced.

A fair summary of his whole article, I think, would be that his focus is on showing the value of stunning for Halal; but that he recognises that this is no help with Kosher. His suggestion there is that we should investigate food grade local anaesthetics.

He summarises “the welfare issues during slaughter without stunning” as being three main issues: “the stress of restraint, whether the cut is painful, and whether the animals experience undue distress whilst it is bleeding [to death] such as the aspiration of blood into the lungs”.
He summarises research that shows on the first point that the Kosher cut can be painless and that the animal may become unconscious very quickly. He concludes, I think, that concerns remain around pre-slaughter restraint, the aspiration of blood into the lungs while dying for larger animals, and varying levels of expertise which may affect whether all cuts are painless. Rosen, writing in 2004, takes a much firmer line and concludes that Kosher is a humane method of slaughter. However, I can’t get into the RVA papers online as we are clearly too tight to have an institutional subscription to it (roll on open access!) so haven’t been able to read it.

Farouk looks at the research questioning whether stunning is humane, but he seems not to agree with it: “There is enough evidence to conclude that head-only electrical stunning does not kill the animal before the animal is slaughtered and the procedure is painless to the animal both at its initiation and whilst the animal is unconscious before slaughter. Therefore, it is the opinion of this author that pre-slaughter stunning using head-only electrical stunning is an acceptable method to meet the requirements of industrial processing of halal meat.”
Both the RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming meanwhile maintain their line that they would like to ban non-stunned slaughter. They discuss the period around slaughter as well as the cut itself, in their explanation.

I am not sure where that leaves me. I do know that there is much worse stuff happening in farming of meat. Transportation of animals is a more serious issue, and so is low-welfare farming. In the end, if you are going to kill a big animal, or rather, lots of big animals in an industrial process, it’s going to be very difficult to do that with no fear or pain. I am told by my butcher that the meat I eat is from local farms, humanely reared, and humanely slaughtered. I am sure if I observed even the most humane slaughter I would be traumatised: I cried for days after putting my cat down.

I just don’t what to think. I am probably a closet vegetarian (my family were all vegetarian when I wa growing up) ; but I do believe in supporting compassionate farming: I just wish I could reliably identify it.
You have made me think and re-examine my views: thank you. I’m not sure I am convinced yet about non-stun slaughter, but I can see that ppl who are convinced do have some grounds for that.

Really good summaries beast. Thanks for providing us with that.

If I may, I'd like to widen the topic somewhat to the recent calls for schechted meat that ends up in the 'mainstream' food chain to be labelled as such (as posted above by me and by others, in the UK the hindquarters of cows and sheep do not enter the kosher food chain, and animals that found to have signs of injury or illness are not kosher - all this meat is sold to 'mainstream' butchers*). The point that made many of us kosher-eating Jews (and others) rather concerned was that the call was only for shechted (and hallal) meat to be labelled. We felt that in the name of true transparency and fairness - to consumers, producers and retailers - that a better way to proceed would be to label ALL meat with details of the method of slaughter to include pre-stunning, gassing, electrocution, drowning, shooting AND failure rates that necessitated a second bit at the cherry, so to speak. Singling out shechita (and hallal) as being uniquely cruel and uniquely worthy of almost naming and shaming seemed disingenuous and that is where some of us feel that anti-Semitism and racism play a part in people's beliefs.

• the hindquarters of cows and sheep need to have the sciatic nerve removed before the meat is kosher (as well as all major blood vessels). It's one of those requirements which is a 'just because' - there is no logical rhyme or reason to it. For reasons that I am not entirely clear on, the practice of doing this in the UK ceased in the mid 1900s. The skill has been lost and Rabbis who supervise shechita now argue that they because they have never seen this done, they would not know what doing it correctly or doing it incorrectly would look like, so they cannot supervise it. So hindquarters are not kosher.

** whilst these non-kosher animals or parts thereof may be sold into the mainstream food chain, the prices achieved will be far lower than would be achieved by selling to the kosher market (see my point above about financial incentives to not much it up).

I would certainly like to see animal welfare - included but not limited to slaughter methods- part of meat labelling. I think it is absolutely fair to say that it shouldn't be just two methods of slaughter that get reported.

We have a sort of reverse method at the moment- there are some forms of chicken in particular- which have a kitemark for ethical treatment. But there is scope for more data.

Of course the cheap'n'skanky meat trade will resist with all its power

Yup.

It's the 'after the event' type outrage that does me in. I mean, how do pepole actually THINK that the chickens they eat get to cost a few quid?

Beast, we need a guerrilla labelling action: "GrossMark". "This product guarantees you're eating meat from an animal that suffered needlessly! Buy something better next time"

at grossmark

we could have a splat, with some feathers and a beak....

actually, what we need is a pair of big suffering eyes.

Ppl refuse to think about what they are eating. My mother used to kill her own geese and chickens (before the vegetarian phase). At least she took some responsibility. Actually, as she has weak wrists, the bastards always escaped.

meanwhile, on aother thread, ppl are frothing about having to buy 7 lots of veg a day. The few posters who are saying, "eat less meat and more veg, thats how its meant to work" are being ignored.

Frothing vs reflecting and changing. I wish I could say I hadn't been there...