User:RPSM/workshop/ritual slaughter

Hi RPSM, here's a User page for uploading information about ritual slaughter that you might like to see edited for articles. Maybe I'll move some of your postings here, so you can see how it works. Sound good? Thanks. HG | Talk 22:43, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

reference used by Ronit Gurtman (I think)
Bloch Pub. Co. Shehitah By Jeremiah Joseph Berman Published 1941 Bloch Pub. Co.

Shehitah: A Study in the Cultural and Social Life of the Jewish People By Jeremiah Joseph Berman

Has 15 pages on Switzerland. ¨ Gurtman has no bibliography on the web, but I think this looks like the reference.

Found on Google book search, but copyright restrictions do not permit searching the book.

Gurtman has extensive quotes blow by blow of development in Switzerland. RPSM 14:41, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

..................................§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§.................................

Farm Animal Welfare Council

FAWC Secretariat

7th Floor

1A Page Street

London

SW1P 4PQ

Report on the Welfare of Livestock when Slaughtered by Religious Methods,1985

This is the only information available (hard copy only) available from the FAWC Secretariat on religious slaughter. RPSM 15:41, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The following link is in working order as today's date:

http://www.islamawareness.net/Food/unite.html

and reprints an article in The Independent (Paul Vallely) at the time of the Farmers' Welfare Council recommendations to the UK government. 11 June 2003

RPSM 16:33, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

LEDA document:

http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/search/toc.php3?handle=HLS.Library.Leda/gurtmanr-shehitah_jewish_ritual

This paper by Ronit Gurtman quotes sections from Jeremiah Joseph Berman: Shehitah (1941) that gives a detailed and accurate history of shehitah bans.

RPSM 16:44, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

"The first documented expression of condemnation for the sale of Jewish meat to Christians was in an epistle entitled, “On the Insolence of the Jews,” sent to Emperor Louis the Pious by Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons in the year 829. Agobard complained that “when Jews slaughter an animal, having a defect, they sell the meat to Christians, and in their pride call the animals, meat for Christians, ‘christina pecora.”   While Emperor Louis the Pious paid little attention to Agobard’s complaints, this was the beginning of an onslaught of Church and royal decrees throughout Europe for many hundreds of years forbidding the sale of Jewish meat to Christians, and in many cases forbidding the practice of Shehitah altogether."

Shehitah: Jewish Ritual Slaughter, Ronit Gurtman

Berman: Shehitah at 217. (Citing Charles J. Hefele, “Histoire des Conciles,” Vol. 4. Edited by Leclercq, Paris 1911.  Quoting Migne P.L. t 104 col 69 ff).

RPSM 16:56, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Why does there have to be a time limit back in time to talk about bans connected with shehitah?

RPSM 17:03, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I do not think it is possible to improve on the historical account given by Berman in Shehitah, as 1941 was closer to the time when the first modern bans were enacted starting in 1867 (two Swiss cantons) The Farmers' Animal Welfare Council at their site have nothing now available later than 1985 on religious slaughter. The references in the article are outdated and have been corrupted - some of them culled from newpaper or BBC articles that are only available for a limited time.

The debate in 2003 in the UK was simply because this advisory body FAWC recommended banning shehitah, and this was investigated and rejected by the UK government. Case closed.

Topical newpaper debates that are out of date are unsuitable for inclusion in an Encyclopedia, unless they have lasting historical significance.

RPSM 18:20, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

reference: The politics of beef: Animal advocacy and the kosher butchering debates in Germany JUDD Robin ; Jewish social studies. New series ISSN : 0021-6704, Cote INIST : 24843 Indiana University 2003, vol. 10, no1, pp. 117-150 (PERIODIQUE) (35400011691517,0050) RPSM 19:35, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Another view
http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/news_factory/ALL/923//

Autumn 2003 Outrage (Animal Aid's quarterly magazine)

A recent report on the slaughter of 'red meat animals' by the government's official advisory body on agriculture offered 308 recommendations as to how the annual killing of millions of cattle, sheep and pigs can be done more decorously.

Inevitably, all of the media attention settled on just one of the Farm Animal Welfare Council's recommendations - a ban on slaughter without pre-stunning, as practiced by Muslims and Jews.

On behalf of Animal Aid I joined in the debate following publication of the FAWC report - first, with a letter to The Times newspaper and then in a 15 minute debate on Sky Television with senior figures from the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Muslim Council of Great Britain.

In both forums I declared that religious slaughter is a vile and merciless way to treat animals, but that I also have concerns about the way bigots jump on the 'ritual slaughter' bandwagon. As to 'humane' British killing, I have personally visited six slaughterhouses and seen, for instance, pigs shackled upside down by one leg, their throats slashed and gushing blood. I've seen them slip from their shackles and crash head first on to the concrete, thrashing desperately and with blood pouring from their throat wounds. This is 'humane slaughter'. At one slaughterhouse I saw a man with a stick mindlessly beat every animal he unloaded from a transporter. At another, I saw a crippled pig kneed and kicked along an aisle to the place where she was subjected to electrical stunning.

The great conceit of 'humane slaughter' is that stunning renders animals immediately 'insensible' so that they feel nothing when the knife is drawn across their necks.

I am not remotely convinced that the captive bolt (used on cattle) or the electrical 'stun' is effective. The bolt often fails to hit the target square-on. And sending a massive electric shock through an animal's head seems merely to cause another level of trauma that momentarily freezes them physically. Gassing produces its own intractable problems. I base my views on what I have personally seen, on conversations I've had with a scientist at Bristol University who undertook killing experiments, as well as a reading of scientific papers on the subject.

No doubt the introduction of 'stunning' was an attempt to remove some of the horror from the killing business. But whether the frayed sensibilities of the meat-eating public was the prime concern or the suffering of the animals themselves, is difficult to judge. Equally, the introduction of Halal and Shechita slaughter - both of which call for a sharp knife and a clean cut - were also billed as improvements on the old even more nightmarish methods.

I don't know which of the 'new improved' methods is worse. But I do know that both are grotesquely cruel and unjustified. We do not need to eat meat. We are better off without it. Nor can I stomach hearing protagonists of religious slaughter claiming their method is swift and painless - when the evidence shows that animals can take minutes to die, are often cut about the neck numerous times rather than the prescribed one clean cut; and young calves can actually choke to death on their own blood.

The horrors of 'humane' slaughter are also many and palpable, as outlined above. The most dangerous element of the debate that followed publication of the FAWC report was the way the FAWC chairwoman rushed from broadcast studio to print journalist contrasting the horrors of the religious method with the caring, beneficent despatch that is supposedly the hallmark of killing factories operating the good old British system. In other words, she used the spectre of 'ritual' slaughter to sanitise a method employed to kill the vast majority of animals in this country. How convenient, given that, with a couple of exceptions, the FAWC council is composed of men and women who profit from the production, transport, dealing and killing of farmed animals.

Andrew Tyler Director, Animal Aid

RPSM 23:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC)