If you want to have high quality meat, please kill me gently.
On Sunday "China's humane animal slaughter launch ceremony" was held in Henan province. The region has hog production that accounts for about 10 percent of the total national production, so it was chosen as the first trial province for humane animal slaughter, the Henan Business Daily reported.
China has just drafted the "Technical Standards on Humane Animal Slaughter" to curb cruel animal slaughter. The whole country will kick off humane animal slaughter training next year.
According to the draft, a comfortable platform must be built to enable the hogs to easily exit from the trucks without falling down on the ground and getting hurt.
Pigsty walls must be opaque to prevent any live hogs from witnessing the slaughter scene outside their pens.
"China's humane animal slaughter launch ceremony" was held in Henan.
Parallel passages will replace single passages so the hogs will not panic, allowing them to view their companions in the other passage. Additionally, people will use plastic batons instead of tasers to drive the hogs forward because the tasers cause the hogs to panic and howl loudly.
Finally, after the hogs are knocked unconscious by electricity, they must be killed within 15 seconds instead of the previous 30 seconds to avoid any animals waking up due to delays, thus sparing them from being slaughtered while fully conscious.
Research indicates that panicked hogs secrete some unhealthy substances. This results in whitish colored pork and causes some unhealthy bodily fluids to be absorbed into animal tissues. To avoid this danger humane slaughter is advocated in order to guarantee high quality meat, thus providing consumers with tastier and healthier meat. Humane slaughter could also generate higher profits for pork enterprises.
(China.org.cn by Zhang Ming'ai, December 18, 2007)
