Stunning

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stunning is the process of rendering animals immobile or unconscious prior to their being slaughtered for food. This process has been common for centuries in the case of cattle, who were poleaxed prior to being bled out. In the United Kingdom and Europe more widely the development of stunning technologies occurred largely in the first half of the twentieth century.

Prior to humane slaughter pistols and electric stunners, pigs, sheep and other animals (including cattle) were simply struck while fully conscious. The belief that this was unnecessarily cruel and painful to the animal being slaughtered was the rhetorical justification for, in many countries, the compulsory adoption of stunning methods, almost all associated with 'modern' technology. The discourse of progress and humanity in morals and technology were thus intimately intertwined. The Humane Slaughter Act of 1933 in Britain, for example, was specifically conceived not only to make stunning compulsory, but moreover to make particularly modern incarnations of stunning, such as the captive bolt pistol and electric tongs, the means by which it was achieved. The wording of the 1933 act specifically outlaws the poleaxe. The period is marked by the development of various innovations in slaughterhouse technologies, not all of them particularly long-lasting.