Halal slaughter in Japan：stunning possible in any export countries

Stunning may not be allowed in religious slaughter, such as with Islamic halal. Animal Rights Center Japan has been addressing this issue in some cases where religious slaughter is performed in Japan without stunning. Currently (May 2020), 6 companies are performing halal slaughter of cattle for export. Halal beef export destinations are Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE, Bahrain and Qatar (one company has meat export certification for several countries). Of these, stunning was already used for halal slaughter for Malaysia and Indonesia even before ARCJ started getting involved. Of the remaining 5 companies exporting beef to UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar, 4 companies are currently using stunning. (However, some companies do not perform stunning depending on the export destination) We’ll omit the details of which slaughterhouse uses stunning for exporting to which country, but currently there are examples in Japan of using stunning for halal slaughter when exporting to any of the following countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar. There was a tendency that stunning was not particularly accepted when exporting to UAE, but after a slaughterhouse in Hokkaido decided to use stunning for UAE, we were able to confirm that stunning was also performed at other slaughterhouses for UAE that ARCJ was inquiring.

Issues we must work on

Stunning in halal slaughter is becoming mainstream, but there remain companies that don’t perform stunning. Also, we have not been able to understand the actual situations with halal livestock for domestic consumption instead of export (if you have information, please contact ARCJ animalrightscenter@arcj.org ). That’s not the only issue related to halal. There is also a big issue that stunning may be less effective because stunning approved as halal slaughter has the condition that “you must be able to confirm that they are alive after stunning.” Cows suffer if a strike with a bolt gun fails. Getting a second blow after a failure results in significant suffering. Please see here for the stunning criteria approved by halal slaughter and their problems. ARCJ will ask for switching to stunning for the current halal slaughter without stunning, while at the same time will also make efforts to prevent the expansion of halal slaughter until the stunning criteria approved for current halal slaughter is changed.

Video/ GAIA Belgium
http://www.gaia.be/nl
The first one to appear is slaughter of a cow with stunning, and the rest is slaughter without stunning.