Is halal meat cruel? Religious slaughter and stunning

The objection

“Religious slaughter is a quick, deep cut that drains the blood fast. Surely a clean knife is kinder than gassing or a bolt gun, and isn’t this just an attack on Muslims and Jews?”

The answer

Shechita, the Jewish method, kills with an uninterrupted cut across the throat from a long, extremely sharp knife, and halal slaughter, the Muslim one, is in many respects similar [1], so the question is whether that is kinder than making the animal unconscious first. The UK government’s welfare advisers, the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), concluded in 2003 that it is not, called slaughter without stunning “unacceptable” and asked for the legal exemption that allows it to be repealed [1]. The EU’s Court of Justice, in its own summary of a 2020 judgment, said “a scientific consensus has emerged” that stunning first is the best way to reduce an animal’s suffering at slaughter [6]. Their verdict is about the method, whoever uses it, and a stun on its own does not make for humane slaughter: the same FAWC report found the high concentrations of carbon dioxide used to stun pigs “not acceptable”, since pigs become breathless and may vocalise and try to escape before losing consciousness [1]. That gas is now used on 90% of pigs in England and Wales, a government figure (FSA, 2024) [3], in chambers like the one investigators filmed near Adelaide in 2023.

Does the cut hurt if the knife is sharp enough?

The UK government’s welfare advisers were persuaded that it does (FAWC, 2003) [1]. They weighed the argument that a rapid, uninterrupted cut with an extremely sharp knife is not painful, but the cut severs skin, muscle, windpipe, gullet, both carotid arteries, both jugular veins and major nerve trunks, an injury they judged “would result in very significant pain and distress” until the animal becomes insensible [1]. FAWC accepted that pain at slaughter is hard to measure objectively, because restraint stops an animal showing it and the severed windpipe stops it crying out, but added that by the same token no one can state objectively that the animal feels none [1]. The British Veterinary Association, the UK vets’ professional body, says the evidence shows animals feel the pain of the neck cut and that all animals should be stunned before slaughter [2].

How long does the animal stay conscious after the cut?

Without a stun, sheep usually lose consciousness within about 20 seconds of the cut [5], but cattle often take longer, and some stay conscious for well over a minute [1][4]. EFSA, the EU’s food safety authority, gives an average of 14 seconds to loss of brain responsiveness in sheep, with 95% unconscious by 22 seconds (EFSA, 2021) [5], and found that most cattle lose consciousness 5 to 90 seconds after the cut (EFSA, 2020) [4]. In one study of 174 adult cattle that EFSA reviewed, 14% stood up again after first collapsing, a sign of full consciousness, and 8% took a minute or more to collapse for the last time [4]. FAWC’s reading of the brain-activity studies in 2003 gave 5 to 7 seconds for sheep, 22 to 40 seconds for adult cattle, longer if the cut arteries seal, and 10 to 120 seconds for calves, and one study it cited found brain responses for up to 60 seconds after shechita in cattle and none after a captive-bolt stun [1]. Cattle take longer partly because the cut leaves the vertebral artery supplying the brain, and the severed carotids can seal with clotted blood [1].

Does the blood drain better without a stun?

Stunning first makes little or no difference to how well an animal bleeds, according to the studies FAWC and EFSA reviewed. FAWC cited research in sheep that found no significant difference in the rate of blood loss whether the animal was stunned electrically, stunned with a captive bolt or not stunned at all (2003) [1]. In a study of cattle summarised by EFSA, the time taken to lose 90% of the blood shed in the first two minutes was 94.4 seconds without a stun and 94.0 seconds after a captive-bolt stun (2020) [4].

Is halal or kosher meat stunned first?

In England and Wales, kosher meat always comes from animals that are not stunned before the cut, while most animals killed for halal meat are stunned first, by the Food Standards Agency’s figures [3]. FAWC explained why in 2003: shechita requires the animal to be healthy and uninjured when it is killed, so stunning that injures it before the cut had been considered unacceptable, though with rabbinical approval some premises had adopted a post-cut stun for cattle, while for halal a stun shown not to kill the animal had been deemed acceptable and was routine in many slaughterhouses [1]. Not every Muslim body accepts it. Jewish and Muslim associations challenged a Flemish law requiring a reversible stun on the grounds that their religious precepts rule it out [6]. In the FSA’s survey week in February 2024, 88% of chickens and about 65% of sheep killed for halal meat were stunned first, while fewer than 3 in 100 of all meat chickens and 29% of all sheep, mostly for halal meat, were killed without a stun (government figures; the halal shares are our calculation from the survey’s table) [3]. The stunned halal chickens include the 1% of all meat chickens stunned electrically at settings outside the slaughter regulation’s standard parameters, which slaughter under the religious exemption does not have to follow [3].