During many religious festivals, millions of animals suffer. Whether it be turkeys and chickens shackled upside down and then inadequately stunned in an electric water bath for Christmas or sheep being forced down on the ground (horribly scary for prey animals) and then having their throat cut open while fully conscious during the Sacrifice Festival.
We all have homework to do to make our religious festivals kinder to animals! But we cannot do that effectively by putting each other’s traditions down but rather by working together, as united human beings, all wanting a more compassionate world. That is what Eyes on Animals is trying to do. For the past 10 years we have been teaching the use of stunners at various slaughterhouses in Turkey and more and more Imams have changed their minds and see that stunning makes the “sacrifice” of animals less painful and find stunning animals is fully halal. This photo of a sheep being rendered unconscious by a captive bolt pistol was taken during this year’s sacrifice festival in a sheep slaughterhouse in Istanbul that we work closely with. Here they offered people to stun their sheep first. The sheep were kept standing up in a natural position and rendered unconscious prior to cutting their throat.
It is just a drop in the bucket considering the millions of other animals slaughtered while fully conscious and sentient but imagine what we could achieve when we help each other more, in a practical way, on how to be more humane? Thanks to Asalet at EonA but also to Sorf/WACPAW who is doing similar work during the Muslim festival in Ghana. Of course, our biggest wish is that we no longer sacrifice innocent animals during our religious festivals but rather sacrifice some of our own comfort and luxury to benefit others that have less.
