John Howell
Main Page: John Howell (Conservative - Henley)Department Debates - View all John Howell's debates with the HM Treasury
Non-stun Slaughter of Animals
John Howell Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Mr Robertson
I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s comments.
Pre-stunning renders animals immediately unconscious and insensible to pain before they are slaughtered. In the absence of stunning, animals can feel the pain of the neck cut, experience a delay to loss of consciousness and experience the pain and distress of aspirating blood into the respiratory tract. While there is no nice way to end an animal’s life, many would agree that that is a particularly distressing account of the last moments of an animal’s life.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I understand what my hon. Friend is saying about stunning, but unfortunately, it does not always work. Something like 26,000 cattle, 100,000 pigs and 9.5 million chickens are mis-stunned each year. How do we solve that problem?