News/Press releases
America bans use of captive-bolt stun gun
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced (12 Jan 2004) that amongst new regulations to prevent the spread of BSE - "Mad Cow Disease" - the use of the pneumatically charged captive-bolt stun gun, which pneumatically piths the animal, is now forbidden, since this can transmit the infection beyond the brain and spinal column. A study (known as the Harvard Study) has found that when air-injection pneumatic stunners are used, CNS (central nervous system) tissue emboli can be identified visually in the pulmonary artery and in the right ventricle of the heart and microscopically in the jugular venous blood. The US Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is amending the Federal meat inspection regulations to prohibit the use of these types of penetrative captive bolt stunning devices. Harvard estimates that for each BSE-infected animal stunned with a standard captive bolt stunner (without air injection) there is a 50 percent probability that a very small fraction of the BSE agent will be transferred to the blood. Pneumatic type captive bolt stunners have a 31% probability that the BSE agent is transferred to the blood, heart, lung and liver.
Shechita not only avoids the suffering to animals caused by such stunning, but it disallows the practice as injurious to humans and therefore incompatible with kosher Shechita. The risks of transferring BSE infected tissue, as outlined by USDA above, are non-existent with shechita.