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Comment by modo_mario | Hacker News Reader

They're in proximity to people that run on a progressive threadmill. When it became socially opportune to so i've seen city folk elsewhere shift their animal rights stance to defend halal slaughter laws deeming it to be progressive because it's tied to a group lower on the proverbial ladder.

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There’s nothing more cruel about halal slaughter, as long as they stun (which most do), than the common method.

That's a load-bearing "as long as".

Animal welfare laws don't give atheist butchers the option to be cruel. They're required to stun the animal first. Why give halal/kosher butchers the option to be cruel? Especially if you claim "most do" choose to stun.

Be kinder to animals, change "most do" to "all do" by removing the religious exception.

...and then come the progressive types to defend 1000+ year old ritual slaughter customs.

In the US at least, freedom of religion does grant some exceptions. The Amish do not participate in Social Security and Medicare, for instance, but I cannot opt out. I’m not sure how it works other places.

I’m not saying I endorse this, but that is why.

It’s not about animal rights at all. Animal rights angle is the strawman used by TWU. Source: I spend 7h in CP/week

Searching those acronyms didn't help me and i'm not american. Can you enlighten me?

Presumably any and every religious tradition on slaughter is better than max-capitalism factory farming style?

What's objectionable about halal?

> Presumably any and every religious tradition on slaughter is better than max-capitalism factory farming style?

It's really not. You're mixing two things, "max-capitalism factory farming" alludes to how the animal is treated while it's alive, e.g. caged hens vs free-range hens, while what we're talking about here is animal suffering via religious ritual slaughter.

Kosher and halal slaughter are not animal-friendly. They mandate cutting the animal's throat but preserving its spinal cord so it feels every possible pain in its last moments alive as the blood drains out.

Stunning it before death and/or putting a bolt through its brain would be a lot more humane, but those methods didn't exist when those religions came up their rules, so of course not one iota of progress can be added.