I know alameda, they have their minds made up and I am willing to bet all that is important to me that those people have never butchered their own meat to eat it.

I had the main artery cut on my right wrist with a doctor´s scalpel, no anestisia no pain killers...  The only pain I felt was when the doctors put a garot on my wrist to stop the bleeding after the intervention.

The piston gun is only used to make the work of the slaugther house workers easier to handle the animal.  After being stunned the animal is then gored and hung to bleed, so it is more humaine for the workers and not the animals.

My reasonning is if you cannot butcher your meal yourself then do not tell others how to do the work and do not work in those types of environments.

People want to eat meat but then tie the hands of the ones who have to do the dirty work for them to enjoy their serloin steak.  We have been butchering animals in that fation since the advent of the blade.  I have shed a tear when I killed my first animal even now I still cannot butcher a rabbit and my brother who is 6 feet 2 and weighing 250lbs cannot butcher ducks but we have learned to respect the animals we are about to kill for our meals and not show them the blade that will slice it´s throat and WE ARE NOT MUSLIMS.  It is basic respect to the animal that will become our meal.

Hmmm...I can´t get rid of the quote of mine....the box just fills up wth other text. Drat!

Anyway, I have not actually slaughtered any animal myself, I´m afraid I´d cause the animal to suffer. I should learn as I´m thinking of getting chickens, ducks and quail. 

In the past I´ve hired someone to do it for me. The man that did it was very fast and the animal didn´t even cry. I grow veggies and before I pick, I say a prayer. I know it may sound silly to some, but I"m against any mindless harvesting. It´s rude to just rip off leaves and fruit. 

Hmmm....cutting the head off isn´t halal or kosher. The jugular vein must be cut. The man that did it for me used to get the body of the bird under his armpit, the neck between his two fingers. I´ve heard when chickens heads are lower than their body they sort of go into a hypnotic state. As soon as the vein was cut he put them in a sort of funnel thing to bleed them. All in all the whole thing was smooth and neat. 

I have a friend who has hens and I´ve been getting used to petting and holding them. Maybe. As one friend of mine says, "they have a really good life, then a few uncomfortable seconds". I´d like to make those last seconds as nice as possible. The man that did the slaughter for me didn´t seem to cause any discomfort to the animals. 

"Ḏabīḥah (ذَبِيْحَة is the prescribed method of slaughtering all animals excluding fish and most sea-life per Islamic law. This method of slaughtering animals consists of using a well sharpened knife to ma"ke a swift, deep incision that cuts the front of the throat, the carotid artery, wind pipe and jugular veins but leaves the spinal cord intact. The head of an animal that is slaughtered using halal methods is aligned with the Qiblah.

no it´s not alameda, the ones we used a knife on were the big animals like the goats, lambs beef and pork, chicken, goose and ducks we used the hand axe

I think if the head is cut off the jugular is severed as well. The trauma to the animal must depend on the sharpness of the knife and the skill of the user.

Bydand,

You are quite correct whey you point out the skill of the one doing the slaughter impacts creatly on the suffering of the animal, which is one reason I have not done this. On the other matter it seems I was not clear enough. Kosher and Halal do not allow the spinal cord be cut. 

" Ḏabīḥah (ذَبِيْحَة is the prescribed method of slaughtering all animals excluding fish and most sea-life per Islamic law. This method of slaughtering animals consists of using a well sharpened knife to make a swift, deep incision that cuts the front of the throat, the carotid artery, wind pipe and jugular veins but leaves the spinal cord intact.The head of an animal that is slaughtered using halal methods is aligned with the Qiblah."

Nobody has "made up their minds"...it seems sensitive people have made up their minds that this law will be anti-muslim or anti-jewish. But if the science backs it up, halal and kosher slaughter will still be allowed. Why cry wolf when there is no wolf around? The story tells us that it is dangerous to do that.

Oh but there are wolves around and they are dressed up as law makers that do not have a clue what goes on on ranches and farms and basicly have no clue what so ever what it takes to raise, tend and butcher meat.

Here´s a recent article in Science News about brain cell death. It seems that about a minute after the blood supply to brain cells is cut off, an electrical charge buildup is released, resulting in "an eerie shudder of activity". This doesn´t address the difference between halal slaughter and the Western practice of using a knocker but it´s an interesting, if morbid, article at least.

The link is:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/332665/title/Wave_of_death_may_not_be_a_last_gasp

That may not work for everyone, as Science News requires subscription registration for some articles, so the full text is:


Almost a minute after a rat’s head is severed from its body, an eerie shudder of activity ripples through the animal’s brain. Some researchers think this post-decapitation wave marks the border between life and death. But the phenomenon can be explained by electrical changes that, in some cases, are reversible, researchers report online July 13 in PLoS ONE.

Whether a similar kind of brain wave happens in humans, and if so, whether it is inextricably tied to death could have important implications. An unambiguous marker could help doctors better decide when to diagnose brain death, knowledge that could give clarity to loved ones and boost earlier organ donation.

In a PLoS ONE paper published in January, neuroscientist Anton Coenen and colleagues at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands described this wave of electrical activity in the rat brain occurring 50 seconds after decapitation. The Nijmegen team, which was exploring whether decapitation is a humane way to sacrifice lab animals, wrote that this brain activity seemed to be the ultimate border between life and death. They dubbed the phenomenon the “wave of death.”

But neurologist Michel van Putten of the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands, wasn’t convinced. “We have no doubt the observation is real,” he says. “But the interpretation is completely speculative.”

In the new study, van Putten and colleagues devised a mathematical model of how a nerve cell would behave if its oxygen and energy supplies were suddenly cut off. The model consists of just a single cell with three kinds of channels that allow charged particles to flow in and out. The spaces outside and inside nerve cells have unequal electrical charges, a difference that allows neurons to fire the impulses they use to communicate.

After an abrupt halt of energy and oxygen supply, the channels stop functioning normally, causing a buildup of positive charge outside the cell. This buildup prompts a big discharge of electrical activity about a minute after starting the simulation — the wave of death.

Study coauthor and physicist Bas-Jan Zandt, also of the University of Twente, says that the simulation closely matches what is observed in the rat brain. Such cell behavior could be the start of a damaging process, he says, such as cell swelling, but there’s nothing about the actual wave that means the nerve cell is going to die.

“It doesn’t cause damage to the cell,” Zandt says. “In principle, it is a reversible process.”

The observed brain wave may represent an event on the way to death, but probably isn’t death itself, says clinical neurophysiologist Kevin Nelson of the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Coenen, coauthor of the earlier study, says he was happy to see the modeling experiment. “It nicely shows what we already expected,” he says of the study’s finding that the wave is due to a massive change in cell membrane charge. Yet he still thinks that this wave may be an irreversibly damaging process, and he and his team plan to test this.

Laws are not made in that way. Laws are written and set up by specialists. It´s never a single minister or something who writes a law. But I guess you didn´t really look into that system, and basically have no clue what so ever it takes to write a law. Come on... you can disagree with the law, but don´t pretend like law makers are idiots because they have a different idea than you do.