For the past 8 years Eyes on Animals has been educating slaughterhouse personnel and managers, professors and religious authorities throughout Turkey about the benefits of stunning animals before restraining them and cutting their throats. Restraining them and cutting their necks open while fully conscious causes serious fear and horrible pain, particularly the way it is done in practice inside Turkish slaughterhouses.
Here animals, such as goats, sheep and often also cattle, are hoisted fully off the floor while completely conscious by a chain around one leg and then have their necks cut, often “ sawed” back and forth. Even injured animals are put through the entire slaughter process while fully conscious. Halal simply means “ healthy/safe to consume” and does not require that the animal be killed while fully conscious. Carrion is forbidden, but carrion is the decaying flesh of dead animals not the flesh of animals that are slaughtered with pre-stunning. We are trying to break this myth and spread awareness about better methods to slaughter animals without causing as much suffering as the current methods used. The good news is that more and more Turkish people are in favour of stunning and more and more slaughterhouses are trained in captive bolt stunning and have a stunner to now pre-stun the animals.
This video clearly shows the difference and shows one of the Turkish slaughterhouse that now stuns the sheep before restraint and throat cutting. We still have a long road ahead, only 6 slaughterhouses in Turkey use the stunner, and there is still much resistance among Halal certifying companies and some people claiming to be religious experts, but the times are a changing !
