A cow walks down the tight corridor of her squeeze box.
Meanwhile, the slaughterhouse operator grabs a ball of compressed air, loads a metal cylinder that fits in his fist.
"It is a pistol with a perforating rod (or" matador ", in slaughterhouse jargon, Editor's note): it is he who will allow the irreversible stunning to be accomplished by hitting the animal at the level of the cerebellum", explains Laëtitia Brunet, director of the Couserans slaughterhouse, in Lorp-Sentaraille, in Ariège.
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It happens in half a second.
At arm's length, the operator places the end of the device between the two horns of the animal.
Dull detonation.
The beast collapses dead.
Brain-dead but still alive, she will be suspended from a rail and then killed by two stab wounds in the neck.
The scene we have just witnessed, it takes place in all the slaughterhouses and follows a process imposed by European regulation n ° 1099/2009: “Animals are killed only after stunning (…).
The animal is kept in a state of unconsciousness and insensitivity until its death.
"
Except that, by virtue of freedom of religion, this rule provides for an exception ... which is widespread: ritual slaughter, without stunning, intended for Jewish and Muslim communities.
Of the 250 French slaughterhouses, 150 benefit from a derogation issued by the State allowing them, provided they have been ordered, to do so.
In 2020, the L214 association published images filmed in one of these companies.
Cattle are kept with their heads and necks outside a rotating “trap”.
The machine turns around to position the animal on its back.
An operator delivers a sharp blow, the cow's head tilts back and blood spurts out.
In some images, we see the animal struggling.
In some cases, cattle may be in agony for several minutes while still being conscious.
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When they leave the slaughterhouse, all the carcasses are pinned with multiple labels and veterinary stamps showing the number of the slaughterhouse and a letter: "T" to designate the traditional slaughtering practiced in the Ariège abattoir that we visited and "R" to denote the ritual slaughter shown by L214.
The problem is, when the meat is sold commercially, those famous letters no longer appear on the packaging.
And there is a reason for this glaring lack of transparency: during retail sale, certain pieces of meat that meet ritual slaughter without stunning are sold like regular meat, without any “halal” or “kosher” specification. .
"For questions of food preferences, Muslim consumers eat more offal and front parts of the animal," explains Anaïs Gonzalez, scientific mission officer at the OABA.
In order not to waste the rear parts, we pass them through the conventional circuit.
"
“Under Jewish dietary rules, you cannot eat the parts of the carcass that have been in contact with the sciatic nerve,” continues Anaïs Gonzalez.
The entire rear of the carcass is then found in the conventional circuit.
So, to help consumers know what they are buying, the OABA has listed all the slaughterhouses that do not have the famous exemption, the one that would allow them not to stun animals.
The list is available on the association's website.
It's very tedious, but it works.
Each package of meat sold in supermarkets features the slaughterhouse number starting with the two digits of its department.
If this one is on the OABA list, it means that it does not practice ritual slaughter and, therefore, that the meat you have in front of you is from a stunned animal.
If it does not appear, however, there is room for doubt: it is impossible to know whether the meat was sacrificed according to a religious rite or not.
But there is an even simpler solution: go organic.
“Since February 2019, it is forbidden to affix the“ organic farming ”logo on meat that comes from ritual slaughter,” explains Anaïs Gonzalez.
And in terms of taste and blindly, does the meat have a different flavor depending on how it is slaughtered?
Laetitia Visse, chef and patroness of the well-named restaurant La Femme du Boucher, in Marseille, was asked to take the test with three steaks bought in the same Auchan supermarket.
“This one is the tastiest,” she says, blindfolded, pointing to a steak from a slaughterhouse that uses both methods of slaughter, which cannot therefore be said to come from. a stunned animal.
"This one is the most tender", she continues about the organic.
"And the third… it's dry, it tasteless, it's almost a little rancid and it's super firm.
This is a halal steak, made from an animal slaughtered without stunning.
“I hope that I will not speak nonsense but for me, an animal slaughtered without stunning, it is stressed, therefore inevitably the flesh is firmer.
Instinctively, I would say this steak is from an animal that hasn't been stunned.
»Bingo.
In the ranking, she will prefer organic meat which is also the most expensive (20.95 € / kg).
However, its better taste may also be due to other criteria, such as the way it was aged.
Then comes the meat from the slaughterhouse which practices both traditional slaughter and ritual slaughter (15.95 € / kg).
In last place, halal meat at 16.95 € / kg.
Clarification: the test could as well have been carried out with a kosher steak.
Be careful, in the same way that the European regulations include respect for freedom of religion, the object of this report is absolutely not to convince Jews and Muslims to change their practices.
On the other hand, the public authorities are clearly in a position to impose more transparent labeling on meat, for example by displaying on “ordinary” steaks the famous “R” for ritual slaughter or the “T” for slaughter. traditional.
This would already be a very big step for transparency vis-à-vis the consumer.