Jim Shannon
Main Page: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)Department Debates - View all Jim Shannon's debates with the HM Treasury
Non-stun Slaughter of Animals
Jim Shannon Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Robertson
I agree with my right hon. Friend on both of those points. I will come on to say more about the former point; I suspect that I will be called out of order if I go too far down the latter.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Like the hon. Gentleman, I eat red meat regularly and I am also an animal lover. However, I do believe we can accommodate people. If we had the labelling to indicate whether stunning was used, people would have the opportunity to choose whether to buy that meat.
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.