Hacker News Reader

Is there consensus of what gas is best for the purpose? I read some papers on animal slaughter done with gas and apparently even things like helium, argon or nitrogen are not completely neutral.

One horrifying thing I've read is that industry actually often uses CO2 because it's cheap. Which causes hurtful and very emotional suffocation.

View on HN

Nitrogen: you’re breathing it right now.

Still somehow some animals can tell pure nitrogen from nitrogen with oxygen mixed in.

For example mice exposed to pure N2 show epileptiform behaviors (same with Argon or Helium but suprisingly not Xenon, maybe because it's somewhat anesthetic as well).

Helium seems to good for pigs.

The trouble is that most comparisons are against CO2 which is alltogether horrible with respect to every quality except the speed of death.

There seems to be not much research on pure nitrogen especially as pure gas.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S175173112...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com