This study examined the effect of neck cut position on the time to physical collapse in upright restrained halal
slaughtered cattle (n = 644). Time to collapse was used as an indirect indicator of the early stages of onset of
unconsciousness. Cattle were slaughtered with either a conventional low (LNC) (n = 561) or a high neck cut
(HNC) (n = 83). Mean time to final collapse was higher in the LNC compared to HNC group (18.9 ± 1.1 s and
13.5 ± 1.3 s respectively (P b 0.01)). The mean false aneurysm scores were higher in the LNC cattle (0.8 ±
0.0) compared to the HNC (0.6 ± 0.1) (P b 0.01). Animals that took N20 s to final collapse had larger false
aneurysms. In summary, the HNC reduced the mean time to final collapse and the frequency of animals that
took longer than 20 s to collapse.
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license