Sacrificial Study: New Research Finds Pain in Religious Live Sacrifices

There has long been tension between animal activists and religious adherents over the sacrificing of live animals. Jewish and Muslim leaders have long argued that the sacrifices are not any more painful than what occurs in slaughter houses. Now a study is challenging that assumption and leading to calls in England for a ban on live sacrifices.

Animal protection laws in the UK required the stunning of animals before slaughter but exempt live religious sacrifices. Both Islamic halal and Jewish kashrut law require that animals are slaughtered by having their throats cut. The animal must be alive to allow blood to drain freely — a relatively slow death for the animal. Conversely, the Sikh ritual – chatka – is a fast death caused by a sword.

A study by New Zealand’s Massey University tested animals to detect pain responses and found that Jewish and Islamic methods caused pain within two minutes following the cut, but the animals would fall unconscious after 10 to 30 seconds. They concluded that the ritual slaughter was “painful” — a conclusion that many would find obvious, but it has legal significance since religious advocates have always argued that there was little pain.

Adam Rutherford, an editor of Nature, wrote that the study shows that “the anachronism of slaughter without stunning has no place in the modern world and should be outlawed. This special indulgence to religious practices should be replaced with the evidence-based approaches to which the rest of us are subject.”

Animal advocates are now calling for the UK to follow other European countries to require stunning before slaughter.

I assume that the researchers will now move on to the ritual of Kapparot, where a fowl is held by the neck and swung around the head for Yom Kippur — a sacrifice that is generally not viewed as “chicken friendly.”

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