Pre-Slaughter Electrical Shock is Not "Stunning"
A Meat and Dairy Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Karen Davis, PhD, UPC United Poultry Concerns
November 2021

The purpose of their being dragged face down through cold, salted, splashing electrified water, prior to partial throat-cutting, is mainly twofold: To fit them to the slaughter machinery and to loosen their feathers after they are dead. It is not about "stunning" them.


Photo by L. Parascandola, Tyson Chicken Slaughter Plant in Richmond, Virginia

Benjamin Franklin described his own experience while trying to electrocute a turkey in 1750.

It is distressing how animal advocates and others reflexively recycle the falsehood that birds are meant to be “stunned” by the pre-slaughter electrified trough water through which they are dragged, face down, hanging by their heels on the disassembly line in the slaughter plants. Never was a term more misused and unjust, along with “euthanasia” (a merciful death) to characterize mass-murdering animals by torturous means.

Chicken slaughterhouse
Photo by Carol McCormick, Townsend's Chicken Slaughter Plant in Millsboro, Delaware

It is not possible to "properly stun" a chicken, a turkey or other birds in the slaughterhouses. The electrified water is not intended to stun them in the first place, meaning it is not designed to render them unconscious or pain-free. Nor is it meant to kill them. The purpose of their being dragged face down through cold, salted, splashing electrified water, prior to partial throat-cutting, is mainly twofold: To fit them to the slaughter machinery and to loosen their feathers after they are dead.

High levels of electrical current that could induce outright death are avoided because they would interfere with “plant efficiency” and cause hemorrhage – a “bloody bird,” in the words of a researcher.

Let us please not misrepresent the agony endured by the electrically paralyzed conscious birds or mistakenly urge that they be "stunned" by a process that tortures them. We have a responsibility to render their experience as accurately as possible, whereas the language of “proper electrical stun,” referring to strictly commercial goals, totally disguises their suffering, as documented here: Poultry Slaughter.

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE (PDF).


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