Ah, religious diversity

'As St. Paul so eloquently put it, the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit",' Well that punches holes in the whole crunchy argument about food, doesn't it. I thought the premise of the crunchy approach to food was that it is based on a sense of the holy. Christians have this push-pull issue between the Kingdom and the world. "In it but not of it"- yet a crunchy con can equate the correct sourcing of a meal with reflecting/honoring/living in accordance with the Kingdom, but have problems with a religion that has no apparent disconnect between relationship between the spirit and physical worlds. Which is it? This is a perpetual confusion to me as I read the various Christian arguments. I've been following religious news, well, religiously, for over 40 years and this world/Kingdom struggle seems to be a constant theme that Christians struggle with. Wish Rod would start a thread on that. It does address the whole crunchy approach. Rod and other crunchies, how exactly does your premise that certain ways of living in the world are more "authentic" than others square with "in the world but not of it?" In what ways are your chosen paths not "of the world" when the argument you make for your spirituality is made in terms of how you live in the world and what material choices you make? This is a genuine question.

I don't have a problem with animal sacrifice in Santeria or candomble, as long as the animal is given a quick death and its meat isn't wasted.
Come to think of it, I don't have a problem eating meat as long as it was organically and locally raised, ethically slaughtered, and every-bit-including-the-squeal gets used, and food isn't wasted.
Mind you, I don't mess with blood in ritual very often. (And when I have I've pricked my own finger. That's the only ethical way to do it in my path.) But my grandma taught me how to wring a chicken's neck when I was a little girl, and always said that you don't waste food because that chicken died so I could eat Sunday dinner. Even at eight, I felt that there was some sacred responsibility there.
I think you can discuss the mechanics of slaughtering an animal and the pros and cons of doing that in a high-population-density area without discussing the morality of it.
I recommend dipping into Frazier's "The Golden Bough" if you want to understand why animistic religions use blood sacrifices.

any of the Afro-Caribbean religions practiced in Latin America, some of which are wickeder than others (for example, palo mayombe, related to Santeria but trafficking in darker spirits, can involve human sacrifice).

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Ah yes, that "wicked" Palo Mayombe... what school-child could forget the Palo Mayombe Crusades? Or the Palo Mayombe Inquisition?

But seriously folks:

1) The constitutionality of animal sacrifice was settled by Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993)

2) Palo Mayombe is related to Santeria only by virtue of geography (Cuba)

3) Human sacrifice is no more a part of Palo Mayombe than it is part of the Oprah Book-of-the-Month Club

4) Skulls fall well within the tradition of Christian relics, i.e. "snippits of flesh, bones, and sometimes clothing of holy men and women of the past."

Have a nice day