Re: Sad Kosher Slaugherhouses

"Chano" <chano@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
"Don Levey" <Don_SCJM@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
"Steve Goldfarb" <slg@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
"cindys" <cstein1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Beach Runner wrote:

As far as Jewish laws, the spirit of Kosher killing clearly is
that the animal is not supposed to suffer. They are supposed
to kill it cleanly with one cut of a perfect knife.

This conclusionary remark is also debateable. The laws of Shechita
have the same *reason* as the laws of Teffillin, i.e. because G-d
_said so_. Giving other reasons _might_ be valid, but it cannot be a
_basis_ for following halacha.

Which they do. The animals legs sometimes move reflexively after
death. That does not mean the animal is still alive as PETA
wants everyone to think.

That's true, but it's also true that it takes some amount of time to die,
even from a properly executed single throat-cut. The brain can survive
without oxygen for a minute or two, and some tests conducted during the
French revolution indicated that consciousness seemed to remain for some
period of time (up to a minute or so I think) after the head was chopped
off.

In a different thread this bit of "scientific" information was
discredited so I won't bother responding.

Interesting. The stuff I had seen said that loss of consciousness was
pretty much instantaneous, what wit hthe sudden blood pressure drop.
I'm wondering how the measured.

Regenstein and Grandin, Rosen, HH Dukes, Spori and others did some studies.

The shechita incision causes severance of the major organs and vessels at
the neck, including carotid arteries. This produces a dramatic collapse in
the arterial blood pressure, especially marked in the vessels close to the
brain. The fall in arterial blood pressure is catastrophic and brain blood
flow (perfusion) ceases. The cerebral cortex, the brain region responsible
for feeling and thinking, is particularly sensitive to the loss of
perfusion, and consciousness is lost rapidly (approximately 2 seconds) and
irreversibly.


Approximately 30 seconds after the act of shechita, animals are observed to
make very slow and laboured respiratory efforts and shortly afterwards there
are muscular spasms which can produce some violent thrashing of the limbs.
Both of these phenomena are the consequence of hypoxia (oxygen starvation)
of the spinal cord and are in no respect at all a conscious reaction to
pain. Such movements are well described in decapitated animals.


Brain electrical activity has been employed extensively in pain research.
Classically, brain electrical activity has been measured from the surface of
the scalp - the electroencephalogram (EEG) and, more invasively, by means of
recording electrodes on the brain surface - the electrocorticogram (ECoG).


The use of raw EEG data has been much criticised for several reasons, e.g.
anaesthetised subjects do not have a flat EEG and yet are insensible to
pain. Most dramatically, EEG activity can even be demonstrated in severed
heads. The mere presence of an EEG trace therefore does not equal
consciousness; by the same token, the claim that the stunning method of
choice is the one that is first to produce an entirely flat EEG, is
irrelevant. Time to insensibility is not actually being measured in any of
these experiments, let alone time to loss of any possible pain.


In summary, for the sensation of pain, a functioning cerebral cortex is
required along with a peripheral stimulus of adequate intensity. In the case
of shechita, the starting point is, indeed, an animal which is conscious up
to the moment of the act of shechita, but i) there is a drastic and rapid
fall in cerebral blood flow immediately after the shechita incision that
inactivates the cerebral cortex by depriving it of its blood supply
immediately leading to a rapid and irreversible loss of consciousness.


H H Dukes, Professor of Physiology, Cornell University, concluded in his
research that "consciousness will have been lost within 2 seconds of the
incision" ["A Study of Blood Pressure and Blood Flow in the Vertebral
Arteries of Ruminants, (Ithaca, New York, 1958)]. Sporri in 1965 confirmed
these findings with a manometer (pressure transducer) in the internal
maxillary artery and showed brain blood flow to fall to zero within the
same time frame.

The real shame is that PETA's nonsense gets wide coverage and Chano's
erudite description does not. <GBS>

Moshe Schorr
It is a tremendous Mitzvah to always be happy! - Reb Nachman of Breslov
The home and family are the center of Judaism, *not* the synagogue.
Disclaimer: Nothing here necessarily reflects the opinion of Hebrew University
.

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