Norway school grilled for reindeer slaughter class trip

  • 14/01/2017

Warning: This video and article contains images that may disturb some viewers.

A Norway school's class trip to a reindeer slaughterhouse has been getting mixed reactions after it shared images of the experience online.

On the outing, five-year-old kids were taken to a nearby farm to see the slaughter and skinning of the animals. 

Many comments of support and criticism appeared on Facebook after the school posted photos of the children standing around a freshly-killed reindeer, surrounded by bloodied snow.

Another image shows one of the little Norwegian kids dragging a bloody reindeer skin through the snow.

In the Facebook comments, many praised the school for showing kids where meat comes from.

"So good children in Norway have the opportunity to see the reality!" Mikael Norell wrote.

But the images have almost earned a lot of criticism, with one commenter calling it "barbaric... completely sick," and another saying the children will lose empathy from the experience.

Dag Olav Stolan, head of the Granstubben Barnehage school, said the trip was made to teach the children about the indigenous Sami in northern Norway who are involved in reindeer herding.

"There are many reindeer outside," Mr Stolan told the Guardian. "It is important to show where the meat comes from."

Scandinavia has become known for public dissections of animals. In 2015 a Danish zoo was criticised for publicly dissecting a dead lion with children in the audience. The same zoo one year earlier had killed a giraffe, dissected it and fed it to lions.

Newshub.