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object aimed, at, an animal's death may be made more, instead of less, painful than it ordinarily is.
Electricity has been often recommended for the slaughter both of bullocks and sheep. The experiments hitherto made have shown that there are three objections to its use. First, the meat of an animal so killed is found to be streaked with black lines, and this although the blood is let out in the usual way. Probably no harm at all would result from the consumption of meat thus marked; but it is impossible to expect butchers ever to adopt a system which would have the effect of frightening away half their customers. Second, there is much danger to the operators. Third, it is still somewhat doubtful how far death by electricity can be said to be painless. Unless a very powerful shock be given, the animal is liable to revive in a surprising and disquieting manner when supposed to be quite dead. Until these objections can be removed—and the first of them seems to be of a kind which belongs to the constitution of nature, and cannot therefore be overcome—it would not be wise for any company or corporation, still less any private butcher; to embark on electrical killing of animals, the expense of which must be great.
Another method which has been suggested and tried is not open to the objections surrounding electricity. This is the method of anaesthetics. If we could send our sheep and oxen into a narcotic sleep before delivering the fatal blow, it is obvious that they would feel nothing. At the small model slaughtering-place erected by the Croydon Corporation for the use of "The London Abattoir Society,"
