Ritual slaughter

[1] American scientist Temple Grandin has researched ritual slaughter practices and says that abattoirs which use recommended practices cause livestock little pain; she calls the UK debate over halal slaughterhouses misguided,[2] and suggests that inhumane treatment of animals happens in poorly run slaughterhouses regardless of their halal status.

While Jewish kosher law allows absolutely no stunning (rendering unconscious prior to cutting), many Muslims have accepted it as long as it can be shown that the animal could be returned to normal living consciousness (so that stunning does not kill an animal but is intended to render following procedures painless).

[1] Walter Burkert in Homo Necans discusses animal sacrifice as arising from the anthropological transition to hunting.

Ancient Egyptian slaughter rituals are frequently depicted in tombs and temples from the Old Kingdom onward.

The standard iconography of the ritual involves a bull lying fettered on the ground with the butcher standing over it cutting its foreleg.

[7] Shechita (Hebrew: שחיטה) is the Jewish ritual slaughter for poultry and cattle for food according to Halakha.

Ḏabīḥah (ذَبِيْحَة) is the practice prescribed in Islam for slaughtering all halal animals (goats, sheep, cattle, chickens, etc.

[1] A number of countries in Europe (as well as Australia) have issued restrictions or outright bans on ritual slaughter.

A number of other countries, most notably in Scandinavia, has introduced legal requirements for animals to be stunned either before or just after having their throats cut during ritual slaughter.

Although ostensibly introduced for reasons of animal welfare, the consistent involvement of antisemites in the campaigns from the outset in the 1840s has, among other things led Pascal Krauthammer in a doctoral dissertation to conclude that the aim of the Swiss anti-Semitic campaign, that included elements from blood libel accusations in neighbouring countries, was to reimpose restrictions on Jews at a time when they were just beginning to achieve enfranchisement.

[16] In December 2020, the European Court of Justice ruled that member states of the EU may require prior reversible stunning.

Monica Hunter in her 1936 study of the Mpondo people of the Transkei[26] described the ritual: "When speaking to the ancestors was finished Sipopone [one of Hunter's informants] took the sacrificial spear of the umzi [homestead], passed it between the forelegs of the animal, and between its back legs, which were tied, then stabbed it in the stomach over the aorta muscle.