I started research into farmed animal welfare in Muslim countries and I think this is a useful way to share little updates along the way, and also to track any ideas I come up with so I can refer back to them when I need to compile my findings. Because I’m also working on a grant looking into effective Zakat, and I think I’ll end up doing the same thing for that, I’m going to be numbering farmed animal welfare quick takes with FAW# and Effective Zakat quick takes with EZ#.
so.
FAW#1.
Before starting with this project, I was operating under the assumption that there is a huge amount of good to be done in getting muslims to reduce/cease their consumption of meat. I still think that is the case. However, the reason I though this was to do with animal welfare—I thought that the conditions of farmed animals are so bad, and there are plenty of mentions of the importance of the kind treatment of animals throughout the islamic literature (including in the texts pertaining to Halaal slaughter) that there is a clear argument to be made that factory farmed meat should be rejected by muslims.
I have come to realise that there is a MUCH stronger argument against the consumption of meat for muslims, which is that many (if not most) slaughter techniques employed in the industrialised abattoirs are probably not halal compliant.
Hi Michael. Since writing this I finished the paper for OP which I can share with you if you’d like to read it. I’d say that the research found almost no existing FAW interventions in Muslim countries that leverage Islamic principles: the handful that exist (cage-free campaigns in Turkey, the Gulf, Indonesia, Malaysia) are mostly EA/welfare driven and don’t really engage with Islamic theology. The most promising intervention identified is working within the halaal certification ecosystem, since there are ~400 certification bodies globally with huge variation in standards and significant profit incentives that could be redirected toward welfare. Layer hen welfare was flagged as the most immediately tractable target. Longer term, getting ahead of lab-grown meat’s halaal status could be valuable. Overall the biggest surprise was how little information there was about industries or consumer attitudes in this space.
Afterwards I ran a n~6000 person survey of Muslims from 15 countries to fill in some gaps regarding our understanding of what Muslims think about industrial agriculture and slaughter in relation to their religious and moral beliefs—that survey is finished and I’m working on sharing the results publicly within the next month or so (as well as open-sourcing the dataset).
Ah, influencing certifiers sounds interesting, would love to take a look at the paper! :)
Also looking forward to your survey when it’s ready!
I’ve been curious lately about Muslims’ attitudes towards stunning and slaughter practices, and especially what kinds of stunning would be acceptable, in case we wanted to promote more stunning or even do more R&D for halal stunning.
I started research into farmed animal welfare in Muslim countries and I think this is a useful way to share little updates along the way, and also to track any ideas I come up with so I can refer back to them when I need to compile my findings. Because I’m also working on a grant looking into effective Zakat, and I think I’ll end up doing the same thing for that, I’m going to be numbering farmed animal welfare quick takes with FAW# and Effective Zakat quick takes with EZ#.
so.
FAW#1.
Before starting with this project, I was operating under the assumption that there is a huge amount of good to be done in getting muslims to reduce/cease their consumption of meat. I still think that is the case. However, the reason I though this was to do with animal welfare—I thought that the conditions of farmed animals are so bad, and there are plenty of mentions of the importance of the kind treatment of animals throughout the islamic literature (including in the texts pertaining to Halaal slaughter) that there is a clear argument to be made that factory farmed meat should be rejected by muslims.
I have come to realise that there is a MUCH stronger argument against the consumption of meat for muslims, which is that many (if not most) slaughter techniques employed in the industrialised abattoirs are probably not halal compliant.
Any updates on this, or promising interventions?
Hi Michael. Since writing this I finished the paper for OP which I can share with you if you’d like to read it. I’d say that the research found almost no existing FAW interventions in Muslim countries that leverage Islamic principles: the handful that exist (cage-free campaigns in Turkey, the Gulf, Indonesia, Malaysia) are mostly EA/welfare driven and don’t really engage with Islamic theology. The most promising intervention identified is working within the halaal certification ecosystem, since there are ~400 certification bodies globally with huge variation in standards and significant profit incentives that could be redirected toward welfare. Layer hen welfare was flagged as the most immediately tractable target. Longer term, getting ahead of lab-grown meat’s halaal status could be valuable. Overall the biggest surprise was how little information there was about industries or consumer attitudes in this space.
Afterwards I ran a n~6000 person survey of Muslims from 15 countries to fill in some gaps regarding our understanding of what Muslims think about industrial agriculture and slaughter in relation to their religious and moral beliefs—that survey is finished and I’m working on sharing the results publicly within the next month or so (as well as open-sourcing the dataset).
Ah, influencing certifiers sounds interesting, would love to take a look at the paper! :)
Also looking forward to your survey when it’s ready!
I’ve been curious lately about Muslims’ attitudes towards stunning and slaughter practices, and especially what kinds of stunning would be acceptable, in case we wanted to promote more stunning or even do more R&D for halal stunning.