Slaughterhouses should use carbon MONOXIDE instead of carbon dioxide

In mammals, a lack of oxygen is not what produces the feeling of suffocation. It's actually an excess of CO₂ that does. For example, breathing pure nitrogen gas (no oxygen) will lead to unconsciousness and death, without any of the warning signs of feeling suffocated. Carbon monoxide does this even more strongly, as it competes with oxygen in the blood.

Slaughterhouses claim to "humanely" anesthetize animals with CO₂ before slaughtering them. But that's not much help - the animals experience suffocation. To actually be more humane, they should instead use either carbon monoxide or pure nitrogen gas.

I'm not sure why they don't do this already - maybe it costs more? Probably - but there's no way it could be that expensive(...)( it would almost certainly be less than 0.1% of the total cost of the meat - we could make a subpage to discuss that too ). Maybe all it takes is the right legislation to force companies to do the right thing? If so, to get such a legislation passed, we'd first need to raise a lot more awareness.

Comments