The Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations.

February 5, 2002 3:06 PM

The Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations. Ah, what would the silent animals do without we oxy-moronic humans looking after their welfare. Pity they taste so good.

Some giblets to chew on: "No person shall use, or cause or permit to be used, any mechanical apparatus to kill any surplus chick unless the apparatus contains rapidly rotating mechanically operated killing blades or projection...any person who slaughters by a religious method any animal which has not been stunned before bleeding shall ensure that each animal is slaughtered by the severance by rapid, uninterrupted movements of a knife, of both its carotid arteries and both its jugular veins...no person shall use, or cause or permit to be used, a water bath stunner to stun any bird unless appropriate measures are taken to ensure that the current passes efficiently, in particular that there are good electrical contacts and the shackle-to-leg contact is kept wet...no person shall bleed any bull, cow, heifer, steer, calf, sheep, goat or pig in a slaughterhouse, knacker's yard or lairage within sight of any other such animal."
posted by fold_and_mutilate (17 comments total)

If those regulations didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent them -- and I should think a person who favors animal rights would be the first to say so. And once the regulations exist, they will, in the manner of all regulations, tend to become more and more explicit over time.

But if you believe that all methods of slaughtering animals for consumption (not to mention in cases of disease, etc) are equally "inhumane," then you're essentially saying we may as well throw the rule book out -- or perhaps that the only rule is, "You may never kill an animal."

Are you saying either of those things?
posted by coelecanth at 3:46 PM on February 5, 2002

coelecanth -yes it is.

f&m - laying back in his easy cahir aboard a gently rocking ship, his hook in the water.

Wulfgar! - "What you doin' f?"

f&m - "just trolling, whats it look like?"


Matt, when are you going to do something about this asswipe?
posted by Wulfgar! at 3:55 PM on February 5, 2002

*with a mouthful of giblets:*
Those regulations sound good to me. But not as good as a heifer sandwich!

Mmmmmmmm..... heifer. I think I'll pick up a steak on the way home. And I wouldn't even have thought of it if it wasn't for this post! Thanks, f&m!
posted by David Dark at 5:11 PM on February 5, 2002

I heard the animals don't taste as good if they get scared before they are butchered.
posted by smackfu at 6:27 PM on February 5, 2002

Jeeze...I'm a vegetarian, and have been one for over a decade, yet everytime I read one of f&m's comments I feel like eating meat. Go figure.
posted by skwm at 6:32 PM on February 5, 2002

Why does the front page say that there are ten comments within (not including mine), but I only see 5? (not including mine)
posted by insomnyuk at 7:42 PM on February 5, 2002

Come on Wulgar!, play nice. There's no call for that.

That quote is a thing of evil beauty, you have to admit.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:50 PM on February 5, 2002

stav... sorry, just tired of the shit.
posted by Wulfgar! at 8:12 PM on February 5, 2002

Jeeze...I'm a vegetarian, and have been one for over a decade, yet everytime I read one of f&m's comments I feel like eating meat. Go figure.

I've been a vegetarian for all but one year of my life, but after reading MeFi, I feel like eating a carpaccio appetiser while sitting in the McDonald's drive thru (about to order a Big Mac) in my SUV, then driving to a grocery store where I will buy veal while using my cell phone to invest in the stock of several environmentally unsound multinational corporations while wearing clothes from the Gap and $200 Nike shoes.
posted by Dreama at 8:39 PM on February 5, 2002

Dreama, queen of the rebels.
posted by rodii at 8:48 PM on February 5, 2002

This chick killed herself in a machine with "rapidly rotating mechanically operated killing blades ".

Whether she was surplus or not remains to be seen.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:00 PM on February 5, 2002

That quote is a thing of evil beauty, you have to admit.

indeed. why does this have to about the poster and not the post?

this link is disturbing. so is coelecanth being right that such laws are necessary. i like to be confronted with disturbing.

"You may never kill an animal" ... maybe we've come to that? (except the frickin deer eating my garden ... it's for their own good anyway ... our burden is to kill them)
posted by danOstuporStar at 9:07 PM on February 5, 2002

Here's a sort interesting (almost false dilemma) question for you:

If your child needed a vital organ transplant, and a pig could safely provide this transplant (say a heart), would you kill the pig?

I would personally rip the heart out with my bare hands, if it was necessary. Of course, I would make sure that the animal had first been mercifully put to rest. I am all for the humane killing (the term seems somehow oxymoronic) of animals, but I do not think it should be a matter of law. Sorry if that sounds brutish, but I still think that humans are more valuable than animals.
posted by insomnyuk at 10:41 PM on February 5, 2002

2.—(1) In subsections (2)(c) and (3) of section 2 of the Slaughterhouses Act 1974 (slaughterhouse licences and applications for such licences), the words "under section 38 below" shall cease to have effect.

Now why hasn't this appeared on a PETA billboard? "Got subsections (2)(c) and (3)?"

It's unfortunate that this law has to be so disturbingly rife with legalese. It's necessary, of course, to be implemented. But in my conception of a perfect world, the mere existence of suffering would be respected, regardless of the medium it existed in, and so the law would need read nothing beyond "Animals feel it too", and we'd be done with the whole mess.

Also, Shakira would answer to "Mrs. Apostasy".
posted by apostasy at 10:44 PM on February 5, 2002

insomnyuk: Certainly. But people usually get an ethical "get out of jail free" card when offspring are involved.

Even beyond that, though, you can make the case that a human is more important than a "lower" animal, insofar as you weigh life for life (your case), and not comfort or convenience for life. You could make this case by appealing to the (assumed) fact that humans have a richer cognitive experience than pigs, and less would be lost with the pig's death than with the child's. You could make the further argument that the pig (probably) doesn't have a conception of a unified self, consistent through time, with plans and desires for the future, and so if it's sentience blinked out nothing would actually be harmed, provided the pig didn't suffer. In contrast, human sentience has a clear conception of the future and desires with regard to it, and these desires would be trampled upon by even a perfectly painless, imposed death. This same argument is used to point out why abortion and infanticide are both morally permissible, though, so mileage may vary.

Not having children, I find it a very difficult, abstract dilemma. I can accept the supremacy of the human experience, in limited situations, but don't like the precedent that would set. I can also appreciate the argument against, that the child's need does not imply authority to act against the pig. I tend to lean towards the former, but would prefer we learn to clone organs for transplantation and be allowed to ignore this puzzle.
posted by apostasy at 11:02 PM on February 5, 2002

> If your child needed a vital organ transplant, and a pig
> could safely provide this transplant (say a heart), would
> you kill the pig?

Resorting to personalized emotional situations is not the way to find any general truth.

If you caught a guy breaking into your car, you might, depending on your mood and mentality, beat the fuck out of him, lock him in the trunk, take him out in the middle of nowhere, tie him naked to a tree, and drive home. You might, at the time, believe that that's the right thing thing to do, that he deserved it. But you wouldn't want that written into law. (Cops finds guy breaking into car, must beat the fuck out of offender, lock him in the patrol car's trunk, etc.)

If my child needed a heart transplant and another kid could safely provide this transplant, I might, well, you know, think of offing the other little fucker and using the spare parts for my kid, and I might really try it if I could come up with a workable plan, but that wouldn't prove that it's generally OK to kill other children and snatch their hearts when you need them. You want social rule to be better than the vile personal reactions that may come from desperation and anger.
posted by pracowity at 3:26 AM on February 6, 2002

Four legs good, two legs bad...Except when you see hyenas eating the guts out of a wildabeast while it is still alive.
posted by Mack Twain at 11:47 AM on February 6, 2002