We visited another cattle and sheep slaughterhouse near Balikisir, one that we had never been to before. They already knew about the advantages of pre-stunning the animals before tethering their leg and cutting their throats but claim to not be able to perform stunning at their plant. In the past they even had a stunning system in place but “only used it when the Australian auditors came” The reason is that they risk losing their halal approval from TSE , and thus their customers (like big supermarket chains) may stop buying from them and then they will go bankrupt. TSE in Turkey (like also the halal certifying company Gimdes) has in one of their paragraphs explicitly stated that animals must be conscious at the moment of slaughter! The very frustrating thing though is not just that, but that live-hoisting is also forbidden, but this rule is rarely respected by slaughterhouses here. Hoisting animals alive by one leg (what the majority of Turkish abattoirs do) get away with it from TSE and Gimdes so far as they don’t, or cannot, easily supervise and enforce it ! Frustrating !
