Euthanasia is a complex subject, and it could be argued that our profession is fortunate to have such a valuable tool at our disposal to help prevent animal suffering. Most of us would agree that euthanasia should be used only when absolutely necessary; however, sometimes we are called on to end the life of a healthy animal and when these situations occur, the least we can do is to ensure death is humane and painless.
As most of us are aware, our own ideals for humane death are not universal and perceptions of animal suffering vary greatly between cultures. Transportation, housing, and slaughter of animals in other countries often fails to come close to meeting our expectations for basic humane treatment of animals and many cultures do not believe that animals can experience pain and suffering as humans do. The misperception that animals cannot feel pain has different origins yet nearly all are rooted in religious doctrine.
This last month, the Compassion in World Farming organisation announced that the British Veterinary Association supported the assertion that animals should always be stunned before slaughter, thus helping to ensure a humane death. Stunning effectively renders animals unconscious and unable to feel the pain and distress of having their throat cut, but an alarming number of food animals are slaughtered without being stunned first in order to preserve Islamic and Jewish (possibly others) dietary guidelines for food preparation. Not surprisingly, this large demographic of religious consumers has also put economic pressure on the meat industry to maintain sales resulting in even more non-stunned animals being slaughtered to ease stocking and supply issues from separating Halal and non-Halal meat. Food producers can instead order all non-stun meat, far more than is needed to fulfil religious requirements and subsequently unwary consumers may purchase this meat not realising that the animal has been slaughtered using a non-humane method. There is no labelling to prevent this practice.
Clearly something needs to change. A wide gap exists between our ideas of animal welfare and the social norms in many other cultures yet it is our own modern approach to cultural sensitivity and religious freedom that is resulting in a conflict with animal welfare concerns. Humane death for food animals should be mandatory in our culture. Our growing body of scientific evidence supports the assertion that animals experience pain and brings into question the belief that nonstun slaughter is painless. Furthermore, religion is ever changing and it is becoming more acceptable to adopt modern practices as our society learns and develops. Case in point is the Muslim community in the UK which now largely accepts meat stunned before slaughter as long as the animal was just rendered unconscious by the stun, and not killed before its throat was cut.
While it is desirable to allow religious freedom within our modern society, surely it is also desirable to ensure freedom from pain and suffering in animals under our care. Unfortunately though, it does not look like non-stun slaughter will be prohibited any time soon so in the meantime, we should keep this issue at the forefront of our thinking. Better labelling will ensure that consumers can choose not to fund non-stun meat and more research into humane slaughter practices will provide better evidence to support future initiatives to implement mandatory stunning.
When all else fails, one thing that veterinary medicine can provide is advocacy for our patients during death yet we must not forget those healthy animals that lie just outside of our realm of care and help ensure that they also are allowed to die with respect and humanity befitting of our own culture. We hope you enjoy this issue.