On what criteria do you object to halal/kosher practices? The cruelty of these practices is at the very least highly debatable. Certainly halal/kosher slaughter is much less cruel than the deaths often suffered by animals as a result of human hunting.
Perhaps it is the messiness? Such facts of life as what is involved with the slaughter of animals should be kept out of sight? It's okay for Mexicans to kill animals in Nebraska slaughterhouses, but not for Arabs to kill them in their Michigan backyard?
If I understand correctly, a professional kosher slaughter has strict requirements, and there is a trained butcher using implements that have to be kept faultlessly clean and sharp. A swift cut through the carotids will make an animal unconscious immediately and dead very quickly thereafter.
This is different by orders of magnitude from some Muslim who kills a goat for his family once or twice a year, hacking slowly through the poor animal's throat, as with the disgusting videos we've seen of Nick Berg's prolonged death.
One difference between halal killing and kosher, is that in kosher there is a trained butcher (shochet the right word?), whereas halal is often done by clumsy amateurs for the sake of the experience.
There is a NJ slaughterhouse that has kill-your-own halal days - all these men lined up with their families and their animals, and the animals exposed to the screams of the others and the smell of their blood.
Now I know hog butchering could be pretty festive for rural Americans back when, but it was more about the food and the working together than the kill.
Temple Grandin, the autistic designer of animal processing plants, wrote that the initial kosher slaughtering she saw was cruel, with cattle hoisted upside down by their hind legs (must have been terrifying) before having their throats cut. I believe she has since designed kosher facilities.
Mrs VS