Problem with halal/kosher way of killing animals

[Althusser]

Being that we have the technology to kill animals painlessly... where would this cultural practice fit in at an end game level? What do you people think of it?

inb4 have you seen slaughterhouses in capitalism? terrible conditions, etc. This doesn't negate it. Pretend actual socialism becomes a reality in the industrialized world through revolution...

[ind_com]

I don't see these practices lasting long, provided the revolution is continued in the cultural front. Religion itself will weaken enough for people to abandon these practices.

[Rafiq]

Ha they say all sorts of shit like how it's "medically proven to be healthier". There's a Muslim I know whose largely religiously apathetic who is an expert when it comes to meat (her family owned slaughterhouse), even she said that's bullshit.

[doesn't even make sense]

Ha they say all sorts of shit like how it's "medically proven to be healthier". There's a Muslim I know whose largely religiously apathetic who is an expert when it comes to meat (her family owned slaughterhouse), even she said that's bullshit.

Yeah really. From the way you hear some Jews talking about kosher you'd think most of the country has trichinosis. The whole thing is rather quaint.

[l'Enfermé]

As if it matters whether animals feel pain or not. They're fucking animals and they're gonna get killed and eaten anyways, what does it matter? Anyway this superstitious bullshit won't last too long in a truly enlightened socialist society.

[Sasha]

Being that we have the technology to kill animals painlessly...

do we now? would be lovely if we would start to use it, last time i checked neither driving a bolt down a cow skull nor zapping their brains is painless. its less bloody and thus makes people who dont want to know meat is secretly dead animals a bit less uncomfortable.
i for one have no problem with a well trained knife butcher that kills with a single stroke when those same religious rules also stipulate you need to take well care of the animals when they are alive, that you are not allowed to feed them the remains of their own kind and other waste material etc etc.
seriously, anyone *****ing about religious butchering while not opening their mouths about the non-anesthetic castration of pigs, the cutting of beaks in the chicken bio-industry, the milions of veal who never see a pasture in their life, etc etc need to shut the fuck up as they are intentionally or not are letting themselves be used for xenophobic purposes.
a while back i actually saw some assholes gathering signatures for a ban on religious (read islamic) butchering in front of a fucking KFC for fucks sake....

[pluckedflowers]

I love meat, but frankly I have to say I don't see any way slaughter on the industrial scale needed for providing meat to modern societies can be anything but barbaric. Halal slaughter is a good reflection of this, actually. As Psycho points out, the theory of halal slaughter is not nearly so awful as the xenophobes would have us believe. But, to the best of my knowledge, most so-called halal meat is produced in a way that is barely distinguishable from non-halal varieties, because that's just what happens when you industrialize a process like that. I think we've come a long enough way scientifically to where we can start thinking of alternatives to industrial meat production for providing nutrition to modern societies.

[doesn't even make sense]

do we now? would be lovely if we would start to use it, last time i checked neither driving a bolt down a cow skull nor zapping their brains is painless. its less bloody and thus makes people who dont want to know meat is secretly dead animals a bit less uncomfortable.
i for one have no problem with a well trained knife butcher that kills with a single stroke when those same religious rules also stipulate you need to take well care of the animals when they are alive, that you are not allowed to feed them the remains of their own kind and other waste material etc etc.
seriously, anyone *****ing about religious butchering while not opening their mouths about the non-anesthetic castration of pigs, the cutting of beaks in the chicken bio-industry, the milions of veal who never see a pasture in their life, etc etc need to shut the fuck up as they are intentionally or not are letting themselves be used for xenophobic purposes.
a while back i actually saw some assholes gathering signatures for a ban on religious (read islamic) butchering in front of a fucking KFC for fucks sake....

I don't understand where the obsession with humane slaughter comes from at all; as if it were possible to violently kill a creature with a nervous system and not cause it any distress. I think that maybe people just don't want to deal with the moral choice between simply accepting the harshness of meat production or following a concern for the animal's welfare to its logical conclusions. People want to have their steak and eat it too.

[Sasha]

I don't understand where the obsession with humane slaughter comes from at all; as if it were possible to violently kill a creature with a nervous system and not cause it any distress. I think that maybe people just don't want to deal with the moral choice between simply accepting the harshness of meat production or following a concern for the animal's welfare to its logical conclusions. People want to have their steak and eat it too.

Absolutely, its like people campaigning for injections over the electric chair for the death penalty while actually supporting said death penalty..
I'm no vegetarian (any more) but at least I take effort to treat meat as something special you should eat not everyday and should be willing to pay extra for to make sure the animal is not mistreated during its lifetime, sure I care also about how it dies too but if you don't care how it lived your the worst of a hypocrite.

[doesn't even make sense]

Absolutely, its like people campaigning for injections over the electric chair for the death penalty while actually supporting said death penalty..
I'm no vegetarian (any more) but at least I take effort to treat meat as something special you should eat not everyday and should be willing to pay extra for to make sure the animal is not mistreated during its lifetime, sure I care also about how it dies too but if you don't care how it lived your the worst of a hypocrite.

I'm an ex-vegetarian too. It was one of the liberal conceits I abandoned when I came to terms with the implications of my radical beliefs. I'm not saying all vegetarianism is necessarily liberal, but mine totally was. I just think that the nastiness of the meat industry is ultimately a product of the capitalist organization of food production. Obviously cruelty isn't a factor, but industries for plant based foods have a lot of analogous problems and a few more of their own. I see food activism in general as one of the most futile and petit-bourgeois forms of reformism there is.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I don't know about Kosher, but the Halal slaughtering method seems relatively humane - a quick slice across the neck with a very sharp blade, quickly followed by rapid exsanguination.


I don't understand where the obsession with humane slaughter comes from at all; as if it were possible to violently kill a creature with a nervous system and not cause it any distress. I think that maybe people just don't want to deal with the moral choice between simply accepting the harshness of meat production or following a concern for the animal's welfare to its logical conclusions. People want to have their steak and eat it too.

I want the meat, not the suffering of the animal, so it's hardly nonsensical to want to have more of the former with less of the latter. The "logical conclusion" you're talking about is animal liberation or some bullshit like that, I take it? Well, animal liberation is impossible for farm animals because they've been bred for centuries if not millennia to be dumb walking food on legs. Cows can experience physical pain and distress, despite not displaying explicit awareness of their status relative to humans, so in my mind basic empathy demands that I give a shit about their comfort, if not their freedom (which they cannot conceptualise).

All the rubbish about "liberal conceits" is just bullshit "I'm so r-r-r-r-revolutionary!1!11!!" political posturing. Unless you're some kind of psychopath, the physical comfort of animals during processing should bother you.

[doesn't even make sense]

I want the meat, not the suffering of the animal, so it's hardly nonsensical to want to have more of the former with less of the latter. The "logical conclusion" you're talking about is animal liberation or some bullshit like that, I take it? Well, animal liberation is impossible for farm animals because they've been bred for centuries if not millennia to be dumb walking food on legs. Cows can experience physical pain and distress, despite not displaying explicit awareness of their status relative to humans, so in my mind basic empathy demands that I give a shit about their comfort, if not their freedom (which they cannot conceptualise).

All the rubbish about "liberal conceits" is just bullshit "I'm so r-r-r-r-revolutionary!1!11!!" political posturing. Unless you're some kind of psychopath, the physical comfort of animals during processing should bother you.

I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression and came off like a pompous dick. You've misunderstood what I was trying to say.

When I spoke of liberal conceits I was talking of the belief in the significance of individual lifestyle changes and the possibility that the iniquities of industrial food production could be reformed away if only people had more awareness. Those were the beliefs I was criticizing as liberal conceits and I was criticizing them as beliefs I used to hold that I now reject. The rather non-specific alternative I had in mind when I spoke of the "logical conclusion" of holding the suffering of livestock to be ethically significant is simply a revolutionary awareness of the true causes of the faults and excesses of industrial food production. As long as the logic of capital holds sway, the well-being of livestock (and the workers that handle them!) will be an afterthought at best. Political veganism, animal liberationism, etc. don't generally come to terms with this and are thus reformist.

I guess I was vague because I'm not heavily invested into the question of whether meat is morally justifiable in a general sense. I've heard some pretty good arguments that it isn't from people I respect, but personally I gravitate towards a perspective more or less like yours in that the idea of "liberation" is nonsensical when applied to animals that are by now pretty much physically tailored to play a role in human society. If I wanted to get really pedantic about it, I'd abuse Marxist theory to argue that "liberation" for livestock animals is simply for them to be kept in a manner consistent with their constitution (i.e. humanely). But I feel like I'm full of shit when I say shit like that so I tend not to assert opinions that I don't hold strongly.

[Rocky Rococo]

I'm not religious in any way, but I always buy the halal chicken at the local PriceRite because it is fresher and higher quality than the standard commercial chicken they sell.

[Quail]

When I spoke of liberal conceits I was talking of the belief in the significance of individual lifestyle changes and the possibility that the iniquities of industrial food production could be reformed away if only people had more awareness. Those were the beliefs I was criticizing as liberal conceits and I was criticizing them as beliefs I used to hold that I now reject. The rather non-specific alternative I had in mind when I spoke of the "logical conclusion" of holding the suffering of livestock to be ethically significant is simply a revolutionary awareness of the true causes of the faults and excesses of industrial food production. As long as the logic of capital holds sway, the well-being of livestock (and the workers that handle them!) will be an afterthought at best. Political veganism, animal liberationism, etc. don't generally come to terms with this and are thus reformist.

I am a vegan myself, but I understand where you're coming from. I don't think that a world where people don't exploit animals is possible under an economic system where we exploit people. I think that the logical conclusion of being a vegan is rejecting the exploitation of humans too and fighting against that, because otherwise you're putting the needs of animals above the needs of humans. It's frustrating when there are people who have class struggle anarchist type views, but then pour all of their energy into animal rights activism. It seems futile to expect a society where human beings are treated so poorly to give a flying fuck about the way that we treat animals.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

As if it matters whether animals feel pain or not. They're fucking animals
So are we.

[Positivist]

Food production is necessarily violent and no matter how you slice it (no pun intended) it is going to be violent. Minimizing suffering would be optimal, but feeding people takes priority so I don't have as much of a problem with different methods of slaughtering animals. I think the real problem is that farm animals have been converted to an almost entirely corn based diet, which is extremely unnatural and though it causes the animals to grow larger faster it is miserable for the animals and is linked to possible health risks.

[Kenco Smooth]

As if it matters whether animals feel pain or not. They're fucking animals and they're gonna get killed and eaten anyways, what does it matter? Anyway this superstitious bullshit won't last too long in a truly enlightened socialist society.

So the belief that if a conscious creature can be prevented from feeling pain then, all things equal it should be, is superstitious? Want to explain how you back that one up?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression and came off like a pompous dick. You've misunderstood what I was trying to say.

Thank you for clarifying your position.


When I spoke of liberal conceits I was talking of the belief in the significance of individual lifestyle changes and the possibility that the iniquities of industrial food production could be reformed away if only people had more awareness. Those were the beliefs I was criticizing as liberal conceits and I was criticizing them as beliefs I used to hold that I now reject. The rather non-specific alternative I had in mind when I spoke of the "logical conclusion" of holding the suffering of livestock to be ethically significant is simply a revolutionary awareness of the true causes of the faults and excesses of industrial food production. As long as the logic of capital holds sway, the well-being of livestock (and the workers that handle them!) will be an afterthought at best. Political veganism, animal liberationism, etc. don't generally come to terms with this and are thus reformist.

Fair enough, but in defence of political veganism and animal liberationism I will point out they don't tend to go for electoral-based reform, at least in my experience. They use other avenues to put pressure on the food industry.


I guess I was vague because I'm not heavily invested into the question of whether meat is morally justifiable in a general sense. I've heard some pretty good arguments that it isn't from people I respect, but personally I gravitate towards a perspective more or less like yours in that the idea of "liberation" is nonsensical when applied to animals that are by now pretty much physically tailored to play a role in human society. If I wanted to get really pedantic about it, I'd abuse Marxist theory to argue that "liberation" for livestock animals is simply for them to be kept in a manner consistent with their constitution (i.e. humanely). But I feel like I'm full of shit when I say shit like that so I tend not to assert opinions that I don't hold strongly.

On the other hand, I am really fucking opinionated and not hesitant to give my own perspective :D

[Prinskaj]

I'm not religious in any way, but I always buy the halal chicken at the local PriceRite because it is fresher and higher quality than the standard commercial chicken they sell. That would properly just be the brand, which is of higher quality since, at least where I come from, Halal slaughtering of chicken is done the same ways as normal slaughtering: A clean and quick chop which separates the head from the body. The only difference is the religious prayer, so there is really no difference in the quality of the meat. Also if the process is mechanised, then the process is so quick that the chicken will not be able to feel anything before death ensues.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Why does it matter whether or not a animal feels pain the last few seconds of its life or not?
It's death after that, it's not going to remember or anything.

Let's face it the non-halal way of killing animals isn't that much better either.
I do know that with Kosher killing a Rabbi has to check the place and make sure that the knife is sharp so it will go in one cut.

What I think is a bigger deal, for me, is that there are all sorts of chemical and medicines pumped into the animals, which is rather bad for us.

[l'Enfermé]

So the belief that if a conscious creature can be prevented from feeling pain then, all things equal it should be, is superstitious? Want to explain how you back that one up?
By superstitious bullshit I meant the idiotic Jewish dietary laws("kosher"), and the dietary laws of the offspring of Judaism, those of the Muslims in particular("halal").

Anyway as far as philosophy goes non-humans are not conscious, so it's pretty far-fetched to call them conscious creatures, though.

[Kenco Smooth]

By superstitious bullshit I meant the idiotic Jewish dietary laws("kosher"), and the dietary laws of the offspring of Judaism, those of the Muslims in particular("halal").

Anyway as far as philosophy goes non-humans are not conscious, so it's pretty far-fetched to call them conscious creatures, though.

Fair enough. But as far as science goes they likely are (http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf).