Ritual Slaughter, Animal Welfare and the Freedom of Religion

in: Joachim Duyndam, Annemarie Korte, Marcel Poorthuis eds., Sacrifice in Modernity: Community, Ritual, Identity; pp. 147-163, 2016

In most religious traditions food plays a significant role, both in the sacral and profane spheres of life. On the one hand, culinary traditions are interwoven with the celebration of religious festivals, while on the other hand dietary laws impact daily considerations concerning food. Throughout the centuries, food has functioned as an important identity marker for religious traditions, defining the borders between those who adhere to a certain tradition and those who do not. 1 What people eat and drink, and how they do so, functions as an expression of their identity. As Feuerbach has pointedly summarized this insight: Der Mensch ist, was er ißt. 2

Erasmus Law Review 5.1 (2012)

Many participants in the recent fierce debate on ritual slaughter in the Netherlands have understood this to be a conflict between religious and secular values, pitting religious freedom against animal welfare. The great variety in viewpoints among all groups involved, however – political parties, religious communities, scientists, the meat industry and engaged citizens – makes it impossible to describe any one standpoint as either religious or secular per se. Rather, the politicisation of this issue is an outgrowth of the politicisation of diversity in Dutch society more generally. Yet, another development is equally relevant: the growing, though still largely implicit, distinction being made between ‘involuntary’ minority identities based on biology (race, sex and sexuality) and ‘voluntary’ ones based on personal choice (religion and culture). This distinction is crucial for understanding the pressure being put today on the accommodation of religious difference when it is increasingly perceived as a form of voluntary difference from the norm. When this distinction between ‘congenital’ and ‘chosen’ minority difference is considered more closely, however, from the perspective of contemporary scientific research tracking religion in human neurology and evolution, it turns out to be largely untenable. Correspondingly, scientific expertise offers few, if any, solutions to the question of the place of religious truths in secular democracy, but only changes the terms under which they are politicised.

Patterns of prejudice, 1989

Religions, 2022

In 2008, the Dutch Party for the Animals submitted a proposal to ban religious slaughter without prior stunning. The proposal was widely supported in the Lower House but finally rejected in the Upper House in 2012, mainly on the grounds of religious freedom. Academia was keen to study the polemic, but no research has attempted to study the controversy through a lens of racialization. This is remarkable, given the well-documented increase in Islamophobia and the political use of racism since (at least) the turn of the millennium in The Netherlands (and the geopolitical “West” at large). In this article, I demonstrate that a racializing dynamic is actually part and parcel of the Dutch controversy. I apply a reflexive thematic analysis to study archival material from the Dutch Parliamentarian debate and show that the dispute foremost references Islamic slaughter. Appeals to civilization, accusations of barbarism, dystopian warnings against Islamization, and invocations of Judeo-Christianity are discursive elements that feature in the debate and have racializing ramifications for Muslims. By unmasking this racializing dynamic, I offer a means to empirically explore the ways in which taxonomies of religion and race intersect with and through the politicization of animal ethics. When considering religious slaughter it is essential, I ultimately maintain, to observe the violence caused by socially constructed racial and species differences. Only if we hold both in serious regard do we have a chance to begin to imagine ourselves in relation to others differently and move towards more just futures—for humans and non-humans alike.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2007

The production and consumption of halal meat products, i.e. deriving from Islamic ritual slaughter, have grown steadily over the last 15 years. Today the global halal market is estimated at US $150 billion per year. In this paper I describe the main steps in the integration of ‘Muslim ritual slaughter’ into the national legislation of Western European countries, and present an analysis of the economic and political issues involved. Once the subject of dispute between animal welfare organisations and religious groups, the arguments surrounding slaughter ritual have, more recently, particularly in the aftermath of the BSE crisis, evolved to become an issue of consumer rights. To illustrate this evolution, I examine two specific cases: Switzerland, as a European country, and the UK as a member-state of the European Union.

The Jewish Quarterly, 2013

A tender concern for the weak and the vulnerable might not be a conspicuously fascist trait. Nonetheless, the National Front (NF), along with other groups on the extreme right wing of British politics, fly the flag for animals, and have been doing so throughout the 1980s. 1 Although these organizations attack a variety of practices, including hunting and vivisection, there is one item on the animal rights agenda which, more than any other, commends itself to the cause of nationalism: the campaign against so-called 'ritual slaughter' of animals. The special appeal of this campaign resides in the fact that Jews and Muslims are on the receiving end of it. The NF have produced a slick leaflet on the subject, 'Stop This Evil!', which has been widely circulated over the last four or five years. 2 In September 1984 they held a march in Brighton to protest against 'ritual slaughter'. Martin Wingfield, regional organizer at the time, said the protest 'is part of our overall policy against cruelty to animals.' He repudiated the charge of antisemitism, adducing as evidence that some of his friends are Jews. 3 'Ritual slaugher', otherwise known as 'religious slaughter', is a colloquialism used to refer to the Muslim and Jewish methods of killing animals for food. All animals slaughtered for food in Britain today are killed by an incision made with a knife. Under existing law, the general rule is that animals must be stunned (rendered unconscious) before the incision is made. Stunning is done by various means. The animal is either electrocuted, gassed or shot in the head with a steel bolt fired by a pistol. All these means infringe the religious laws governing shechita (the Jewish method), and most Islamic jurists in Britain take the same view with respect to dhabh (the Muslim equivalent). 4 This is reflected in the law of the land: the relevant statutes do not require animals slaughtered for kosher and halal meat to be unconscious when the incision is made. 5 In January 1988, the NF backed a candidate in a local council by

2021

In Centraal Israëlitisch Consistorie van België and Others (case C-336/19 ECLI:EU:C:2020:1031) the Court of Justice held that EU Member States are allowed to require, in the context of ritual slaughter, a reversible stunning procedure which cannot result in the animal’s death. According to the Court, Regulation 1099/2009 on the protection of animals at the time of killing permits strict animal welfare legislation in relation to religious slaughtering. While the judgement is a welcomed step toward high animal welfare standards in the EU, in certain aspects the Court’s argumentation does not seem well thought out.

Journal of Law and Religion, 2006

The statutory prohibition against ritual slaughter, which does not stun the animal prior to slaughter, as required in most Western nations, poses a significant challenge for the international right to freedom of religion or belief in European nation-states. This prohibition is important not only in Europe, or because of the prohibition itself, but because it implicates the legal status of two minority religious communities in these nation-states, those of Judaism and Islam. Some animal rights advocates have objected to ritual slaughter without stunning because, in their view, it causes needless suffering by the animal, and they have been successful in getting their views enacted into law in a number of European countries. Indeed, some countries prohibit ritual slaughtering altogether, as we shall discuss below. This paper argues that the right to freedom of religion or belief requires nation-states to respect the rights of religious minorities that engage in ritual slaughter, even i...

2014

Ritual slaughter issues have been broadly discussed in virtually all West European countries, where Jewish and/or Islamic minorities have marked their presence. In most cases, the main dimension of the public debate on this matter has concerned the collision between broadly defined religious freedom and the principles of animal protection. Recently, the discussion on ritual slaughtering has also reached Poland, where it has taken a specific form in comparison with Western countries. The distinctive character of the Polish case may be proven, inter alia, by the marginal socio-political relevance of Jewish and Islamic minorities in Poland and focus on the political and economic aspects of the issue. In the presented analysis, the main stress has been placed on the interpretation of religious freedom in this regard, i.e. its conditions and constraints, the conditions of the implementation of European law and the arguments used in the debate. Religious communities’ activities have been confronted with the political and economic aspects of the discussion, which are aimed at investigating the degree of the “politicisation” and “economisation” of the issues under scrutiny.

Derecho Animal. Forum of Animal Law Studies

One of the more intractable issues associated with animal law and ethics concerns responsibly regulating the slaughter of animals according to the requirements of the Jewish religious tradition and some interpretations of the Islamic religious tradition. Most Western liberal democratic societies require animals to be stunned before slaughter to ensure they are insensible when killed. However, the Jewish tradition and many interpretations of the Islamic tradition prohibit pre-slaughter stunning. In these traditions, animals are killed according to specific religious rituals that involve cutting the animal's throat and permitting it to exsanguinate without prior stunning. These requirements therefore come into direct conflict with Statutes, Codes and Regulations of many Western countries intending to give expression to animal welfare policies by requiring pre-slaughter stunning. However, such practices are also protected by international and domestic human rights instruments guaranteeing freedom of religious practice and expression. Recent decisions of European Courts demonstrate the difficulties that arise when countries attempt to regulate this conflict. In exploring several of these recent decisions, this article intends to outline the parameters of this conflict and to suggest a potential way forward to responsible regulation of such practices.