Dutch Muslims & Jews united together

[Jacob]

It all comes back to one thing.

"Woe is us. Remember the Holocaust, you anti-semites."

They will be beating that drum for a thousand thousand years.

Well, when you keep being anti-Semitic it only makes sense.

[Valmy]

It all comes back to one thing.

"Woe is us. Remember the Holocaust, you anti-semites."

They will be beating that drum for a thousand thousand years.

Maybe we should try to exterminate Swedes then you could do the same thing?

[Viking]

Peer Reviewed Evidence

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17972-animals-feel-the-pain-of-religious-slaughter.html

Animals feel the pain of religious slaughter

    15:40 13 October 2009 by Andy Coghlan
    For similar stories, visit the Food and Drink Topic Guide

Brain signals have shown that calves do appear to feel pain when slaughtered according to Jewish and Muslim religious law, strengthening the case for adapting the practices to make them more humane.

"I think our work is the best evidence yet that it's painful," says Craig Johnson, who led the study at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Johnson summarised his results last week in London when receiving an award from the UK Humane Slaughter Association. His team also showed that if the animal is concussed through stunning, signals corresponding to pain disappear.

The findings increase pressure on religious groups that practice slaughter without stunning to reconsider. "It provides further evidence, if it was needed, that slaughtering an animal without stunning it first is painful," says Christopher Wathes of the UK Farm Animal Welfare Council, which has long argued for the practice to end.
Stunning result

In most western countries, animals must be stunned before they are slaughtered, but there is an exemption for religious practice, most prominently Jewish shechita and Muslim dhabiha. Animal welfare groups have long argued that on welfare grounds, the exemptions should be lifted, as they have been in Norway.

Johnson's work, funded by the UK and New Zealand agriculture ministries, builds on findings in human volunteers of specific patterns of brain electrical activity when they feel pain. Recorded with electroencephalograms, the patterns were reproducible in at least eight other mammal species known to be experiencing pain.

Johnson developed a way of lightly anaesthetising animals so that although they experienced no pain, the same electrical pain signals could be reliably detected, showing they would have suffered pain if awake.

The team first cut calves' throats in a procedure matching that of Jewish and Muslim slaughter methods. They detected a pain signal lasting for up to 2 minutes after the incision. When their throats are cut, calves generally lose consciousness after 10 to 30 seconds, sometimes longer.
Cut-throat practice

The researchers then showed that the pain originates from cutting throat nerves, not from the loss of blood, suggesting the severed nerves send pain signals until the time of death. Finally, they stunned animals 5 seconds after incision and showed that this makes the pain signal disappear instantly.

"It wasn't a surprise to me, but in terms of the religious community, they are adamant animals don't experience any pain, so the results might be a surprise to them," says Johnson.

He praised Muslim dhabiha practitioners in New Zealand and elsewhere who have already adopted stunning prior to slaughter. They use a form of electrical stunning which animals quickly recover from if not slaughtered, proving that the stunned animal is "healthy", thereby qualifying as halal.
Pressure drop

Representatives for both faiths responded by claiming that stunning itself hurts animals. A spokesman for Shechita UK says that the throat cut is so rapid that it serves as its own "stun", adding that there is abundant evidence shechita is humane.

"Shechita is instantaneous, and due to the immediate drop in blood pressure and [oxygen starvation] of the brain, the animal loses consciousness within 2 seconds," he says. "It conforms to the statutory definition of stunning, in that it is a process which causes the immediate loss of consciousness which lasts until death."

Ahmed Ghanem, a halal slaughterman based in New Zealand, says that blood doesn't drain properly from stunned animals, although this has been countered by recent research at the University of Bristol in the UK.

Ghanem cites a 1978 study relying on EEG measurements led by Wilhelm Schulze of the University of Hanover, Germany, apparently concluding that halal slaughter was more humane than slaughter following stunning. But Schulze himself, who died in 2002, warned in his report that the stunning technique may not have functioned properly.

Journal reference: New Zealand Veterinary Journal, vol 57, p 77

The NZVJ isn't available online.

[Berkut]

No, the question is whether to end a religiously motivated exception permitting, what for non-muslims and non-jews would be considered, cruelty to animals.

No, the question is whether to create a more restrictive law. There is exactly zero evidence that the process currently legal is cruel - other than assertion, etc.

That is simply not true. Expert testimony is certainly evidence. It might not be convincing to you, but saying it is not evidence is spurious.

The point for Berkut is that if the law is "presumptively" sensible - his position - then changing it is what requires evidence.

Well, this is a little more of a grey area, since we are actually talking about removing an exemption, so there is already an established presumption that slaughter without stunning is cruel. But you do make a good point, that given that the exemption already exists, those demanding it's removal do in fact have a burden to show that the exemption as it exists is not justified.

To that extent, I would agree that those asking for the exemption to be removed should have to show that

A) Halal slaughter is in fact more cruel than stunning slaughter, and
B) That the imposition on Orthodox Jews by removing said slaughter methods is not so significant that it should be maintained.

I thought it was interesting that in France (I think it was in France anyway) they banned it and the courts decided that since Jews could get kosher food from other sources, it was not an imposition to ban it in France. That struck me as a rather odd legal position to take.

[Slargos]

It all comes back to one thing.

"Woe is us. Remember the Holocaust, you anti-semites."

They will be beating that drum for a thousand thousand years.

Well, when you keep being anti-Semitic it only makes sense.

Anti-semitism is all but eradicated in Swedish culture, with the remnants being over-wintered Nazis and immigrants. Still, every time a situation comes up with jews involved, there's complaining about anti-semitism.

[Slargos]

It all comes back to one thing.

"Woe is us. Remember the Holocaust, you anti-semites."

They will be beating that drum for a thousand thousand years.

Maybe we should try to exterminate Swedes then you could do the same thing?

If you feel you must.

I will gladly play the victim over offenses not given me, but rather my ancestors.

[Berkut]

It all comes back to one thing.

"Woe is us. Remember the Holocaust, you anti-semites."

They will be beating that drum for a thousand thousand years.

That is more odious than the attempt to paint this as some kind of religious pogrom. And makes the claim that it IS some kind of religious pogrom actually not as idiotic as I thought it was. Well done, slargos.

[DGuller]

So far, Minsky's article is the only thing of any scientific weight offered.

But it's not really scientific to compare worst case of one method to best case of another method, no matter how often you ignore the nature of this very basic logical fallacy.

[Slargos]

It all comes back to one thing.

"Woe is us. Remember the Holocaust, you anti-semites."

They will be beating that drum for a thousand thousand years.

That is more odious than the attempt to paint this as some kind of religious pogrom. And makes the claim that it IS some kind of religious pogrom actually not as idiotic as I thought it was. Well done, slargos.

Bullshit. It may not always be spoken explicitly, but the subtext is always there: you can't do this, because we're jewish.

Edit: Explcitly. 

[Neil]

Fact is that I'd be arguing exactly the same if only Muslims were concerned. The ad-hom isn't helping you.

And in fact you have.  See:  Berkut going apeshit over Islamic arbitration.

[Berkut]

Fact is that I'd be arguing exactly the same if only Muslims were concerned. The ad-hom isn't helping you.

And in fact you have.  See:  Berkut going apeshit over Islamic arbitration.

Say what?

[grumbler]

My position is that if the law already exists, then we should presume that it has passed whatever bar is necessary when weighing its obtrusiveness vs its utility.

I think any other position would be rather odd to take - should we just assume that some law fails that metric, and hence ought to be changed?

My position as someone who in general thinks that the bar should be pretty high, and also thinks that many existing laws fail to meet that bar is based on the reasoned evaluation of those laws, their usefulness, and their intrusiveness. Just because I think the burden of proof has been met in many cases of existing laws does not mean I think that there ought not to be said burden of proof on those asking for the laws to be changed.

Now, the reason many of these laws exist is that when they were passed, THEY did not satisfy the burden of proof placed on them to show that the law was both necessary and not an unreasonable imposition on freedom. And that is unfortunate. But in this case, I haven't even seen that argument made. Just assumed.

But the fact of the matter is that the law that was passed includes the exception for halal and kosher slaughtering.  By your logic, you must assume that the exceptions "passed whatever bar is necessary when weighing its obtrusiveness vs its utility" and that, as you point out, we should not "just assume that [the law [including the exception] fails that metric, and hence ought to be changed."  Indeed, taking the position that the law should be changed without a clear reason for doing so, including some scientific evidence that the average kosher/halal butchering is less humane than the average stun-before-cutting butchering, "would be rather odd to take."

In other words, your logic would seem to me to support your opposition, not your own position.  What we are debating is a change in the existing law.

[HVC]

Peer Reviewed Evidence

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17972-animals-feel-the-pain-of-religious-slaughter.html

One thing i don't get, if under anethesia the body sends signals that aren't felt doesn't that mean when the animal is unconscious (through throat slitting after the 2 seconds mentioned) you wouldn't be able to tell if it feels pain?

[Berkut]

My position is that if the law already exists, then we should presume that it has passed whatever bar is necessary when weighing its obtrusiveness vs its utility.

I think any other position would be rather odd to take - should we just assume that some law fails that metric, and hence ought to be changed?

My position as someone who in general thinks that the bar should be pretty high, and also thinks that many existing laws fail to meet that bar is based on the reasoned evaluation of those laws, their usefulness, and their intrusiveness. Just because I think the burden of proof has been met in many cases of existing laws does not mean I think that there ought not to be said burden of proof on those asking for the laws to be changed.

Now, the reason many of these laws exist is that when they were passed, THEY did not satisfy the burden of proof placed on them to show that the law was both necessary and not an unreasonable imposition on freedom. And that is unfortunate. But in this case, I haven't even seen that argument made. Just assumed.

But the fact of the matter is that the law that was passed includes the exception for halal and kosher slaughtering.  By your logic, you must assume that the exceptions "passed whatever bar is necessary when weighing its obtrusiveness vs its utility" and that, as you point out, we should not "just assume that [the law [including the exception] fails that metric, and hence ought to be changed."  Indeed, taking the position that the law should be changed without a clear reason for doing so, including some scientific evidence that the average kosher/halal butchering is less humane than the average stun-before-cutting butchering, "would be rather odd to take."

In other words, your logic would seem to me to support your opposition, not your own position.  What we are debating is a change in the existing law.

Yes, I already addressed this, and basically agree. The onus is on those who want to remove the exemption to provide evidence that the exemption does not satisfy current standards of cruelty weighed against freedom of religion.

[garbon]

While I can see fighting to get the law thrown out or modified for all, I don't feel comfortable supporting individuals fighting to keep only their exemptions. Perhaps I'm reading the articles wrong, but from what I can see, I only see this: "Dutch law required animals to be stunned before being slaughtered but made an exception for ritual halaal and kosher slaughters."  Does that mean that I can't slit an animal's throat for a non-religious reason?