WP2. Religious slaughter: Evaluation of current practices

Dr. Antonio Velarde, IRTA, Spain

This WP is divided into 3 tasks:

• The first task is to gather available data relating to animals slaughtered for religious purposes (either stunned or not stunned), incidence and the scale of practices.  The inquiries and investigations will focus on the following countries as a representative sample of the EU countries, candidate countries and other relevant countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, The Netherlands, Turkey, Egypt, Israel and Australia.
• The second task will identify the procedures of the current methods of religious slaughter. The focus will be on handling and restraint methods, neck cutting/exsanguinations/slaughter techniques and postcut handling (e.g. severance of spinal cord).  The benchmarking will be carried out in the same countries as the previous task.
• The third task aims to provide recommendations for optimum religious slaughter practices in order to improve animal welfare during slaughter.