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sufficient restraint of the head and neck. If the head of the animal was not well restrained before turning, more struggling was noticed and sometimes the neck was distorted during the restraining procedure, this was because the operators tried to catch the head of the animals during or after turning. •
Turning was performed over the right or left side of the animals within 8 to 15 seconds. When the animals were turned over an external axis, turning times were longer (average 52 seconds). The cut was performed between 10 and 60 seconds after the beginning of turning. Reactions during turning were wide open eyes, short and continuous bouts of struggling (often repeated over several seconds), attempts to raise the head and body, vocalization (up to 15% of cattle) and laboured pressed respiration especially in the upside down position. It is worth noticing, that in this context reactions of cattle are difficult to record in a predominantly enclosed pen design and they can be masked by the restraining system (Grandin and Regenstein, 1994).
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When the head was well-held by the headholder, the cut was started in 2 to 4 seconds after the end of turning, whereas if the position of the head had to be corrected after the animal was turned it could take up to one minute and sometimes even longer. Performance of the cut varied between operators (between 1 and 13 cuts were performed in the plants assessed during WP2).
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Movement reactions to the cut such as withdrawal or shivering movements could be noticed if the neck was not too tightly restrained. Often after the cut, the headholder was loosened to improve bleeding. This enabled some movement of the neck, which could be vigorous and also allowed the wound to make contact with metal parts of the headholder in these animals.
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After the cut the animal was either left in the inverted position for up to one minute (in individual cases longer), or it was turned back to the upright and sometimes ejected only a few seconds after the cut.
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Blood and rumen content often spread over the proximal and distal wound surfaces and also entered the larynx and trachea, while the animals were lying on their back. This depended on the degree of extension of the neck and the position of the cut.
Aspiration of blood and refluxing gut content after the incision was considered a welfare concern after slaughter without stunning. Though this problem was mainly associated with the inverted position, it occurred with the upright position for both Halal and Shechita slaughter (Gregory et al., 2009). The authors examined bovine respiratory tracts following Shechita and Halal slaughter without stunning, and also in captive bolt stunned animals. During all the treatments animals received the cut in the upright position. The study found blood lining the inner aspect of the trachea in 19% of the Shechita, 58% of the Halal and 21% of the stunned/cut cattle. Blood was found in the upper bronchi of 36% of Shechita, 69% of Halal and 31% of stunned/cut cattle. Ten percent of the Shechita, 19% of the Halal and 0% of the stunned/cut cattle had fine bright red blood-tinged foam in the trachea. Blood covering the larynx was recorded for all cattle. It was concluded that concerns about suffering from airway irritation by blood could apply in animals that are either not stunned before slaughter or do not lose consciousness rapidly whilst blood is present in the respiratory tract (Gregory et al., 2009). These concerns are based on the fact that fluid in the respiratory tract in conscious animals leads to irritation of sensory receptors lining the airway, and in particular the receptors on the glottis and the carina of the trachea. In animals with intact vagus nerves there could have been a cough or expulsion reflex, but coughing would be absent when the vagi had been severed (Canning, 2007) though lower airway irritation may still occur through sympathetic-spinal afferent pathways (Quin et al., 2007). Additionally blood impacting the