IMO the way that halal meat is slaughtered to be is very inhumane although obviously it is prescribed for religious reasons.

I know people who have had to go and inspect abbatoirs....enough said.

What was wrong with it? Ive been loads of times, used to get a lot of meat for the dogs from there.

aaahh, it's 474KB with 101 pages, so it's a biggie

It is the report prepared by an independent working group, and submitted to Defra in 2005.

The membership of the Working Group:


Membership of the Independent Working Group on Snares
The Chairman invited the following to be the Members of the Working Group:
Mr Dick Best, Veterinary Surgeon
Professor Neville Gregory, Royal Veterinary College
Professor David Macdonald, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Oxford
Dr Tony Mitchell-Jones, English Nature
Mr Charles Nodder, National Gamekeepers Organisation
Dr Jonathan Reynolds, The Game Conservancy Trust
Mr Stewart Scull, British Association for Shooting and Conservation
Mr Hugh Thomas, Union of Country Sports Workers
Mr Michael Waters, British Veterinary Association
Mr Colin Booty, RSPCA also attended the meetings to 20th May 2005 but,
unfortunately, had then to withdraw from the process due to other work pressures.
The resulting vacancy on the Working Group was taken up by Mr James Cormack,
Chief Inspector SSPCA.
Dr Ian Inglis, Central Science Laboratory – Secretariat
Ms Diane Owen, Central Science Laboratory – Secretariat
The meetings were attended by Dr Jane Goodwin, European Wildlife Division, Defra.

They had this point to make about diversity of opinion among the group:

Dealing with the diversity of opinion within the Working Group

With regards to the membership of the Working Group, some organisations and
individuals believe that the use of snares can be justifiable whilst others hold the view
that snares should never be used. The Working Group worked together with the
common aim of encouraging the use of alternative more humane methods of control
where appropriate and ensuring that snares are used to high standards and in
accordance with agreed codes of practice, minimising risks to the welfare of both
target and non-target animals.

I'll post their summary in a minute.

with them.
The slaughtering methods/stunning etc not quite working, the animals being so scared when they are shoved in etc etc

Thanks for taking the time to copy and paste Red Collar. What an interesting discussion that must have been ... I would have loved to have been on the working group. I look forward to reading the summary.

I have seen some terrible footage from abbattoirs - that have had me in tears. I too was a veggie for many years due to some of the stuff I saw. It was awful

However, I know an inspector of abbattoirs and have spoken to him at length about welfare issues, we use a small local abbattoir up here (for the estate) and after seeing footage from abbattoirs such as the one Hugh F-W uses, I can feel happy eating meat that I know has been treated and killed humanely and quickly. I am only really happy to buy meat that is locally sourced too as I can't stand to think of any animal crammed into a wagon and driven 100s of miles. I am against live exports too. But this is going way off topic now!

Following on from the previous post about the submission of the independent working party on snares:

This is the summary of their findings.

Executive Summary


1. Snares are currently used in the UK in a number of different contexts, chiefly
to catch foxes and rabbits. Most commonly they are used as part of population control
measures (e.g. to reduce fox predation on other species or to protect crops from
rabbits) but they are used in other contexts also, for example to harvest animals for
food and to capture them for research. Snares involve the use of flexible materials to
capture and restrain, and in this regard they have similarities to gill nets used for
capture of sea fish and mist nets used in the capture of wild birds for ringing.

2. Whilst there is evidence that snares are used widely (for example a recent
BASC survey indicated that 30% of foxes culled by gamekeepers were caught using
snares), their use has been subject to little scientific study.

3. In contrast to the situation in some other countries (e.g. USA and Canada),
snares are widely used in the UK to restrain animals for despatch rather than as
killing devices. Self-locking snares, that can act only with a one-way ratchet effect to
tighten around the neck as the animal pulls, are illegal in the UK (although no clear
legal definition of ‘self-locking’ has been established).

4. There are very few data on the welfare impact of snares. It is believed that, if
they are used carefully, their adverse welfare consequences can be relatively minor.
For this reason they have been used, as the method of choice for capture of animals,
in some research programmes into fox biology. On the other hand, at the other end of
the spectrum, there is no doubt that if used carelessly or irresponsibly (and especially
if not inspected, or if an animal escapes whilst still entangled by the snare) they can
cause extremely severe welfare problems. Clearly much depends on operator practice.
Because there are no adequate data it is not currently possible to assess the welfare
impact of snares under routine use or how frequently severe problems occur.

5. There is a limited variety of other methods for capture or killing of the species
for which snares are often used. However, there have been few studies of the welfare impact of these either so that there are no firm bases from which to assess the welfare
effects of snares compared with these other methods. It would appear that all methods
can have welfare drawbacks in practice. For example, shooting can, if the shot
destroys the brain (and specifically the brain stem), meet the humane ideal of causing
instantaneous, irreversible, loss of consciousness followed by death without fear or
pain. However, if the shot does not cause rapid death and the animal escapes injured
(and there is good reason to believe this happens in a proportion of cases) it may
suffer a prolonged and painful death.

6. The proportion of non-target species caught and held in snares set for foxes is
often quite high (the results of various surveys reviewed here ranged from 21-69%).
Whilst the capture rate of non-targets can be reduced through good field-craft
(requiring training and careful attention to good practice), it may be difficult in some
environments to reduce the overall proportion of non-target animals caught in fox
snares to below about 40%.

7. We have found almost no information about the welfare impacts, or rates of
non-target capture, associated with the setting of snares to catch rabbits. It seems to
be commonly believed that snares often kill rabbits rapidly by breaking their necks.
However, we have found no data with which to confirm or refute this and are
unaware of any data on the clinical or pathological effects of snares on rabbits or on
causes of death.

8. The lack of data available on the use of snares, and particularly on their
welfare impact, is a serious problem both in making cost/benefit assessments about
when the use of snares is justifiable (see below) and also in developing guidelines
about good practice. We have therefore recommended that research is required (see
below).

9. We have suggested that there are two important principles in the humane
control of vertebrate pest species. The first is that when deciding whether and how to
proceed, the expected benefits of proposed management procedures should be
‘weighed’ carefully against the possible costs in terms of harm to the welfare of the
animals involved or to populations of non-target species. Procedures that have the potential to harm the welfare of animals should not be used unless there are benefits
in doing so that outweigh the welfare costs. The second is that, where it is decided
that a certain procedure should be used, steps should be taken to, as far as practicable,
minimise the risks of adverse welfare impacts.

10. The greater the scale of possible adverse impacts on animal welfare, the
greater the need for formality and rigor in cost/benefit analysis. For a research or
wildlife control programme at the national level we suggest it would be important that
these matters are considered by a group and that soundly-reasoned, ethicallydefensible
decisions are reached collectively. For smaller, local issues such as rabbit
control on a farm or other land, individual farmers or land managers are responsible
for carefully considering the balance of possible welfare costs against benefits
themselves but may often wish to discuss this with others.

11. We have developed a Code of Good Practice and recommend that Defra
endorses and promotes this Code.

12. We have recommended that this Code be reviewed in three years in the light
of research results and data collected in the interim on the use of snares.

13. We have recommended that research should be carried out in the following
areas:
• survey of the use of snares in the UK, covering all their uses
• the welfare impact of snares, based on investigation of their physical (clinical
and pathological), physiological and behavioural effects
• potential use of foot snares
• technical improvement to snares to reduce the risk of adverse welfare impacts,
including the development of remote monitoring devices, and to reduce risks
to non-target animals.

14. We have recommended that Defra encourages, and is open to, applications for
funding to support work into (i) welfare refinements to existing methods of vertebrate
pest control, and (ii) novel methods (these might include, for example, agents delivered in a safe, species-specific, manner that humanely either kill or prevent
breeding).

15. We have recommended that Defra consider making the following legislative
changes:

• the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 be amended as soon as possible to
require that on discovery snared animals be released or despatched and for the
carcase to be removed the same day (See section 2.8.1.4).

• the wording concerning inspection intervals in the Wildlife and Countryside
Act 1981 be amended as soon as possible because, at present, it allows for the
possibility that animals could be held in snares for unacceptable periods.
Unfortunately it has not been possible in the time available for the Working
Group to agree an exact form of words to recommend to Defra. (It should be
noted that the Code of Good Practice provides considerably tighter constraints
on inspection interval than the current legal minimum).

• to make it a legal requirement to use a fixed ‘stop’ on all snares;

• that following review of the Code of Good Practice in three years time and in
the light of research findings (see 12 and 13 above), Defra consider giving the
Code a greater legal status.

when they are talking about cost/benefit analysis they mean welfare impact vs benefits, not financial.

I think it is quite a good summary considering the differing views represented by the various delegates.

I don’t understand what the fact that they have a natural existence means people should not choose not to eat them?

Many people become veggie for many different reasons – whats the problem with that one? Veggies don’t just give up lamb you know but all meat.

Also just because they lead a natural life does not mean they die a natural death does it?

Just as RC wondered when badger baiting would come up I wondered when the veggie thing would rear its head.

Very rarely does that happen. As for being scared, strange place, animals not used to being handled, some apprehension is normal.