Humane slaughter (Part 2)

 

This is a follow-up to the Oct. 19th posting titled Humane slaughter http://yohanon.blogspot.com/2009/10/humane-slaughter.html

I queried two rabbis, Yehuda Benhamu and Alexander Haber.

Their qualifications:

Rabbi Benhamu is a North African (Sefardi) rabbi who also is a shochet (ritual slaughterer). He is the rabbi of B'nai Sephardim/Shaari Shalom in Hollywood, Florida.

Rabbi Haber, although he has a Sephardi ancester, is Ashkenazi; he is the son and grandson of shoctim (ritual slaughterers); his father heads a yeshiva in Jerusalem; he is a rabbi at Cong. Bnai Israel in Norfolk VA.

I have known both for years and both have my highest respect; they normally provide the reasoning for their decisions. Both fall into the "orthodox" category.

R. Haber responded that the primary problem with stunning an animal before the cut was that the blood must forcefully "spritz" from the animal. The suggestion is that the stunning somehow reduced the arterial pressure. This is a question neither raised nor answered in the article.

Unless the blood spurts from the animal, the meat is trefe - not acceptable.

R. Benhamu agreed, but noted that the very last paragraph of the article may - may - offer a way to combine stunning with ritual slaughtering.

The last paragragh reads:

"Johnson thinks the way forward is best exemplified by Muslims in New Zealand, who use a reversible form of electrical stunning that animals can recover from if they are not immediately slaughtered. This proves the animal is alive when killed and is therefore halal"

Assuming the blood spurts from the stunned animal, will this be acceptable to the rabbinate? Possibly.

But which rabbinate? Sefardi or Ashkenazi? Israeli or outside of Israel?

By the way, R. Haber wondered if the brief, albeit intense pain of the knife might not be more psychologically damaging to the animal than the perhaps longer, albeit less severe, pain of the stunning process.

It seems to me that the researchers would have been wise to involve Jewish and Islamic religious authorities and expert ritual slaughters to participate in the study so that questions such as raised by the rabbis Haber and Benhamu could have been addressed.

To me, there are two possibilities:

One: The researchers had an agenda that might be compromised by having qualified observers present or

Two: Tim Edwards, the article's author, either had an agenda, lacked time to research the scientists' paper, or was too lazy to do what I did - ask the religious authorities - and then go back to the researchers for clairification (which I have not yet done).

Yohanon Glenn

Yohanon.Glenn at gmail dot com