this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
22 points (72.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43970 readers
724 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That is why by law cows are made unconscious before slaughtered.
In which country? I've never heard of this, at least in the US.
1958 Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.
Thanks for the link. It says nothing about making them unconscious before slaughter. They're just saying that the slaughter should be quick and not subject the animals to additional suffering beforehand:
The Act requires all meat companies selling to the US government to provide stunning by mechanical, electrical, or chemical means prior to the killing of cattle, calves, horses, mules, sheep, swine, and other livestock, except in the case of slaughter for religious or ritual purposes. Stunning must be accomplished in a manner that is rapid and effective before the animal is shackled, hoisted, thrown, cast, or cut. (While the law refers to βother livestock,β poultry is not specifically included.)
So I went a little further by reading parts of the actual regulations, i.e., the implementation and enforcement of the act, because I'm genuinely curious to learn about this. It seems that they're defining stunning as basically destroying the brain of the animal before killing the body. For instance: "Unconsciousness is produced immediately by physical brain destruction and a combination of changes in intracranial pressure and acceleration concussion." It seems like a distinction without a difference, since they're essentially killing the animal by "stunning" it or making it "unconscious".
Stunning it doesn't kill it, it renders it unable to feel pain. They sell the cow brain so no, it doesn't destroy it. Midwesterners love some cow brain to eat, it's sold in grocery stores.
I found another source explaining it from experience: https://www.grandin.com/humane/cap.bolt.tips.html
It seems that we may both be partially correct: If a penetrating bolt is used the animal is killed instantly. If a non-penetrating bolt is used, the animal sometimes revives. What we don't know is how prevalent each approach is. Either way, re-reading your initial post that I responded to I realized that this debate doesn't matter. Your point seems to have been that they don't feel pain as they're killed, and I concede that you're correct. I missed that this was the point you were making, and that you were not mainly arguing whether the animals were killed instantly or not.
Edit: Just to add that I concede the point that they don't feel pain only in a general sense. Looking at that last link, it seems that this procedure would have a lot of room for error and I'm sure that as a consequence a lot of cows suffer unintentionally.