Slaughter without stunning is painful for the animal  Slaughter without stunning is painful for the animal. All slaughter methods which do not involve stunning work by bleeding the animal so that it suffers brain-death. This is normally done by cutting the neck. Depending on the species of animal, it can survive for anything between 20 seconds and 2 minutes after this.  Although animals can’t tell us if they are in pain, the best metrics we have – brain activity, eye movement and making sounds – indicate that the animals are in pain during this period. [1] Rendering the animal unconscious stops it feeling pain immediately.  When we have two methods of killing the animal available, it is inhumane to use the more painful one. It follows that we should require stunning.  [1] Federation of Veterinarians of Europe, ‘Slaughter of animals without prior stunning’, FVE Position Paper, FVE/02/104, 2002,