Stunning is only unreliable when done badly. All of the objections listed represent cases where best practice was not being followed. It is important to implement stunning properly, but there are plenty of stunning methods which, when carried out properly and carefully, have been shown to be fully effective.  Religious slaughterhouses are not immune to failures either, with the most common reported problem being an insufficiently sharp knife. The same report cited by opposition condemns the religious slaughter of animals and says “when shechita is performed on chickens in Britain, only about half the birds have both their carotid arteries completely severed by the cut” allowing brain activity to continue for up to 349 seconds. [1] Requiring stunning will improve the base line of welfare we are working towards, and we can then start to worry about ensuring compliance  [1] Stevenson, Peter, ‘Animal Welfare Problems in UK Slaughterhouses’, Compassion in World Farming Trust, July 2001,  , p.19, 21