Dear donors and friends,
We just finished a 10-day mission in Turkey.
As you know, in most Islamic countries animals are slaughtered while fully conscious, preferring to slaughter animals as their Prophet had in his time, with a sharp knife only. However, more and more Muslims are interested in new ideas to improve animal-welfare and now better understand the science behind stunning, no longer worried that it renders the meat not Halal.
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Still, before this growing awareness reaches the animals in the slaughterhouses, a lot of effort is needed. That is why our Turkish team (Asalet and Ayhan) met with as many Imams and municipal authorities as possible, to show them how a captive bolt pistol works and explain all the advantages of rending animals unconscious before slaughter. After getting their approval, we would visit the regional slaughterhouse and talk to the manager and veterinarian.
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Asalet and Ayhan meeting with municipal authorities convincing them to stun animals before slaughter
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The good news is that so many were positively interested in the captive bolt pistol and open minded towards adopting stunning.
Three of the slaughterhouses (one sheep and two cattle) we visited these last weeks have now adopted stunning in their plant. That makes six Turkish slaughterhouses in total that, due to our efforts, now stun the animals! The result: thousands of animals a year will be rendered insensitive to pain prior to slaughter. That is a huge improvement in animal welfare.
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Sheep in waiting pens at a Turkish slaughter house. At least these sheep will from now on no longer be slaughtered while fully conscious.
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We trained the workers of the plants on how to use the captive bolt pistol to stun the animals, how to clean and maintain the captive bolt pistol and then, via a contract, leased the plant manager one of our captive bolt pistols. The deal is that they must continue to use it and keep us up-to-date on how things are going. After one year, if we are satisfied, they can keep the captive bolt pistol.
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Asalet handing a stunning device to a plant manager. From now on, animals that are slaughtered in this plant will be stunned before slaughter.
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Thank you for reading this newsletter and bearing with us in our struggle to improve the lives of slaughter animals. Of course we would rather see that no animals be slaughtered at all, but the reality is that this will continue to happen. So what we must do is decrease suffering.
Please help us continue this type of work. Together we can drastically reduce animal suffering now. Consider a donation.
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Lesley Moffat
director Eyes on Animals
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