Expert: Robin Flynn - 8/15/2007

Question
"dear Robin Flynn
I want to turn into a veggie but i want true moral reasons to do so.
Many Muslims argue that their method of slaughtering animals(the halal
method) is totally painless(they cut the neck severing the blood
vessels and nerves connecting the brain to the spinal cord)and non
distressing. Is there any scientific evidence proving this untrue?????
I do not believe their argument that plants feel pain but many
researches prove plants communicate so is a plant in any way affected when we
cut a neighboring plant????.please elaborate on the topic of plant
communication.
They feed their animals only the hay and chaff of dead plants.Thus they
say you can be a non veggie without hurting or distressing any living
being.
please comment.


Answer
Hi Robb,

First let me thank you for caring enough about the animals to inquire about the cruelty that surrounds them. Adopting veganism is the first step to living a compassionate lifestyle. I adopted veganism because I refused to support and contribute to animal cruelty. Since, then I have found the additional benefits of veganism  to the environment and to my health. I always found it odd when religious organizations try to defend killing. When it comes to animal slaughter there is simply no painless, compassionate process that can take place. It doesn’t matter who’s doing the killing. Killing is killing. You will probably find scientific proof from both sides of the argument. However, “how” to kill an animal isn’t the point, killing the animal is the point. Animals do not deserve to live in horrific conditions, they don’t deserve to be treated as an object and slaughtered simply because we can dominate them. Let me pose this question to you. What to you think would be less painful if someone put a knife to a human’s throat? The halal method or the western method. Animals feel pain the same way we do. They hear the screams of the other animals on the assembly line that they are being forced to enter into. Many of them die in route to slaughter because the transport methods are horrendous. Many of them are boiled, dismembered or  skinned alive after being slaughtered from any method. The entire life of an animal that will be killed for a purpose [i.e. food, fur, research] is extremely sad and cruel. I answered a similar question about plants a while back. I will include my answer within this response:

Plants, when stressed, release a chemical called ethylene. This chemical indicates that the plant needs to increase cell growth or take other measures against the perceived stressor. Scientists measured levels of ethylene released from stressed plants by “listening” to them using lasers until a certain frequency was measured. This producers the "screams" that people will tell you is proof that plants “feel pain”. While this research shows that plants might have a stress-avoidance response, it is quite a stretch to refer to this as “pain.”

The World Health Organization has defined pain as “an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”.  Plants lack nerve endings, brains, hormones, and other structures that would allow them to experience pain. They also lack the ability to move away from sources of stress, an evolutionary trait linked with the ability to feel pain. It is even more erroneous to equate this response with the pain suffered by animals and human beings. I am not aware of any scientific proof that unequivocally proves plants feel pain.

Animals on factory farms are treated like meat, milk, and egg machines. Chickens have their sensitive beaks seared off with a hot blade, and male cattle and pigs are castrated without any painkillers. All farmed chickens, turkeys, and pigs spend their brief lives in dark and crowded warehouses, many of them so cramped that they can't even turn around or spread a single wing. They are mired in their own waste, and the stench of ammonia fills the air. Animals raised for food are bred and drugged to grow as large as possible as quickly as possible—many are so heavy that they become crippled under their own weight and die within inches of their water supply.  Animals on factory farms do not see the sun or get a breath of fresh air until they are prodded and crammed onto trucks for a nightmarish ride to the slaughterhouse, often through weather extremes and always without food or water. Many die during transport, and others are too sick or weak to walk off the truck after they reach the slaughterhouse. The animals who survive this hellish ordeal are hung upside-down and their throats are slit, often while they're completely conscious ( In the halal method this is always true). Many are still alive while they are skinned, hacked into pieces, or scalded in the defeathering tanks. Even if plants could feel pain they would never experience the horrific plight that animals endure.

And those who argue that plants feel pain and suffer should support a vegan diet because the number of plants that must be fed to an animal to produce enough meat for one human is greater than the number of plants required to feed that same human if he or she ate the plants directly. Meat-eaters are responsible for “killing” 10 times more plants than vegetarians, and they also kill and cause suffering to animals.


Please read a great article from Satya magazine: Let Us Eat Plants
http://www.satyamag.com/march97/eatplants.html


Please also read why veganism is a smart decision from these sites below:
http://www.sugarrocket.com/vegan/why-i-am-vegan.php
http://www.flex.com/~jai/articles/101.html
http://www.vnv.org.au/WhyBeVegan.htm
http://www.vegansociety.com/phpws/index.php?module=faq&FAQ_op=viewFAQs
http://www.goveg.com/vegetarian101.asp


I have also included some information on the cruelty involved with slaughter and Muslim vegetarians.
http://www.goveg.com/feat/chewonthis/
http://members.aol.com/yahyam/muslim_vegetarian.html
http://www.ivu.org/news/1-96/muslim.html

If you have any additional questions please feel free to contact me.

For the animals,
Robin