LAUSR

Over the past two decades, there have been several attempts to introduce slaughter labelling for meat packaging. These attempts have been unsuccessful, partly because they’ve focused on the issue of pre-slaughter stunning. Ongoing debate on the science of stunning, and the reasonable fear that a ‘stunned’/‘unstunned’ label may lead to the victimisation of people who support religious slaughter, has led to a deadlock. However, there’s a real danger that stunned/unstunned labelling would create the inaccurate impression that slaughter with pre-stunning is always quick, clean, and humane, when in reality there are myriad challenges with some stunning systems – such as water bath stunning for poultry, and aversive CO2 stunning for poultry and pigs. It is wrong to single out challenges with religious slaughter when improvements are necessary across the board. Working with stakeholders, Farmwel has developed a simple …