Ritual slaughter

Ritual slaughter is the practice of livestock for meat in the context of a ritual. Ritual slaughter involves a prescribed method of slaughtering an animal for food production purposes. This differs from animal sacrifices that involve slaughtering animals, often in the context of rituals, for purposes other than mere food production.

Ritual slaughter as a mandatory method of slaughter for food production is practiced by Muslim and Jewish communities totaling nearly 25% of the world population. Both communities have similar philosophies in this regard.Temple Grandin has researched Ritual Slaughter practices and says that abattoirs which use recommended methods cause livestock little pain; she calls the UK debate over Halal slaughterhouses misguided, and suggests that inhumane treatment of animals happens in poorly run slaughterhouses regardless of their halal status.

The Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), which advises British government on how to avoid cruelty to livestock, on the other hand, says the way Jewish Kosher and Muslim Halal meat is produced causes severe suffering to animals. Ritual slaughter is in many EU countries the only exception from the standard requirement, guarded by criminal law, to render animal unconscious before slaughter (before any cutting). While the Jews accept absolutely no stunning (rendering unconscious prior to cutting), many Muslims have accepted it as long as it can be shown that the animal could be returned to normal living consciousness (so that stunning does not kill an animal but is intended to render following procedure painless).

Walter Burkert in Homo Necans discusses animal sacrifice as arising from the anthropological transition to hunting. With the domestication of livestock, the hunt was gradually replaced by the slaughter of livestock, and hunting rituals were consequently transformed to the context of slaughter.

In antiquity, ritual slaughter and animal sacrifice was one and the same. Thus, as argued by Detienne et al. (1989), for the Greeks, consumption of meat not slaughtered ritually was unthinkable, so that beyond being a tribute to the gods, Greek animal sacrifice marked a cultural boundary, separating "Hellenes" from "barbarians". Greek animal sacrifice was christianized into slaughter ceremonies involving Greek Orthodox Christian ritual, known as kourbania.

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