The Turkish scientific and veterinarian community, as well as more and more Religious authorities, are understanding the advantages to animal-welfare and meat quality when animals are first correctly stunned during slaughter. With correct stunning, the animal is immediately rendered unconscious and insensitive to pain and thus, when the throat is cut open to drain the blood, the animal does not have to experience the extreme fear and pain of this process. Corlu slaughterhouse near Tekirdag has a pneumatic stunner and offers the option to customers to have their cattle being stunned prior to being bled out.
On October 26, 2016 Eyes on Animals and TSB|AWF visited this slaughterhouse and saw how a large bovine was calmly moved into a restraint box, kept upright on all fours (instead of being forced to fall and then hoisted alive) and be stunned correctly. The bovine fell down unconscious and was then hoisted and bled out, without any reaction of the animal to the pain. The blood drains out just as easily, if not sometimes more easily as the animal is relaxed when unconscious, than when stressed during live-cutting. We would like to thank Corlu for the meeting today and congratulate them for being a forward-thinking slaughterhouse, willing to take steps to best ensure that animals are caused as little pain or stress during slaughter. This is by far the most humane slaughter process we have seen in Turkey. We would also like to thank Professor Tamer who was the pioneer behind this educated decision.
To watch a video comparing the slaughter of a bovine in Turkey with and without stunning to see the difference, please click HERE.
