Michael, when I was a toddler during WW-II every Friday I'd go to the farm with my grandfather where we'd buy several dozen eggs and two chickens, one for each of my grandmothers to cook. Their legs were bound, they were put into a burlap sack and then into the trunk of the cld Pontiac. Next we'd drive to an old part of town to a nondescript little concrete building where a guy wearing a yarmulke and tallis (prayer shawl) would sharpen the knife, say a ritual prayer, and slit the chicken's throat. The bird was then put head down in a big funnel so the blood could drain into a bucket. Killing a bird or animal any other way wouldn't follow the laws for making the meat Kosher.
Nowadays of course I can hear people screaming about making some poor little two year old boy witness such gore and animal brutality! For me it was just part of growing up Jewish, of growing up human. I was never under the illusion that chickens grew already plucked and cut up in the poultry section of the supermarket.
My point, though, is that other than the name we call God, this is little different than the animal sacrifices as practiced in the Carribean and parts of West Africa. Prayers are said, the animal is slaughtered, and then it's cooked and eaten.