Do Animals Feel As Much Pain As Humans

Brain signals have shown that calves appear to feel pain when slaughtered according to Jewish and Muslim religious law

(Epitome: Alex Segre / Rex Features)

Encephalon signals take 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 brand them more humane.

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

Johnson summarised his results last calendar 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.

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The findings increase pressure on religious groups that practice slaughter without stunning to reconsider. "It provides further evidence, if information technology was needed, that slaughtering an fauna without stunning information technology commencement is painful," says Christopher Wathes of the UK Subcontract Animal Welfare Council, which has long argued for the practice to terminate.

Stunning result

In nigh western countries, animals must be stunned before they are slaughtered, only at that place is an exemption for religious exercise, 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'south work, funded by the UK and New Zealand agriculture ministries, builds on findings in man volunteers of specific patterns of brain electrical activity when they experience pain. Recorded with electroencephalograms, the patterns were reproducible in at to the lowest degree eight other mammal species known to be experiencing pain.

Johnson adult 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 beginning cut calves' throats in a procedure matching that of Jewish and Muslim slaughter methods. They detected a pain signal lasting for upwardly to 2 minutes after the incision. When their throats are cutting, calves more often than not lose consciousness after 10 to 30 seconds, sometimes longer.

Cut-pharynx practice

The researchers then showed that the pain originates from cutting throat nerves, non from the loss of blood, suggesting the severed nerves send pain signals until the fourth dimension of decease. Finally, they stunned animals five seconds after incision and showed that this makes the pain signal disappear instantly.

"It wasn't a surprise to me, only in terms of the religious community, they are determined animals don't experience whatsoever hurting, then the results might be a surprise to them," says Johnson.

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

Pressure level drop

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

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

Ahmed Ghanem, a halal slaughterman based in New Zealand, says that blood doesn't bleed properly from stunned animals, although this has been countered by contempo 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. Only Schulze himself, who died in 2002, warned in his report that the stunning technique may non take functioned properly.

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

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

Posted by: knutsonclevestimen.blogspot.com

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