Dutch vote bans ritual slaughter
By Matt Steinglass in The Hague
The Netherlands’ parliament voted Tuesday to ban non-anaesthetised slaughter of animals, in a move that will make the Islamic halal and Jewish kosher methods of slaughter illegal.
The ban has led to months of bitter debate in Dutch society over the clash between the country’s tradition of religious tolerance and its recent enthusiasm for animal welfare. While animal-rights activists hailed the Dutch law, observant Jews and Muslims denounced it as the latest in a wave of European anti-Islamic initiatives such as the French ban on public wearing of veils and the Swiss ban on minarets – a wave that in this case swept up Jewish practices as well.
The law was proposed by the Party for the Animals, which with two members in the Dutch parliament is the world’s only animal-rights party represented in a national legislature. But the law gained widespread support from centrist parties who supported it on secular scientific grounds, as well as from the anti-Islamic far-right Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders.
Marianne Thieme, leader of the Party for the Animals, has argued strenuously that the law has no anti-religious intent. Supporters cited scientific studies showing that the modern method of anaesthetising or “stunning” animals before slaughter, usually by shooting a pin into their brains, leads to less suffering than traditional religious methods. Stunning has been required throughout the EU and North America for decades, with only religious slaughterers exempted.
But Jewish and Muslim groups allied with each other in a months-long battle to stop the law, presenting evidence that well-practiced ritual slaughter can meet animal-welfare standards. They reacted bitterly to the law’s passage Tuesday.
“This is a low point in Dutch history, in terms of how the country treats religious freedom. It means we Muslims have no place here anymore,” said Mohamed Ben Hammouch, spokesman for the National Commission of Muslim Organisations, Mosques and Imams.
“It’s a very disappointing infringement on freedom of religion,” said Ron Eisenmann, chairman of the Jewish Community of Amsterdam. Mr Eisenmann said the country’s Jewish organisations would fight the law in the Dutch senate, where it must still be approved, and were taking legal action to block it in the courts as an infringement of the country’s constitution.
The ban led to fierce debate with the country’s centrist parties, particularly the Labour Party, which was split between its animal-rights wing and its substantial Muslim constituency. Three Labour parliamentarians voted against the party line in Tuesday’s vote.
The dissension led Labour, the left-liberal D66 party and the governing Liberals to pass a compromise amendment that will allow unstunned ritual slaughter if it can be proven not to cause more animal suffering than stunned slaughter.
Kosher slaughterers contend that because of the exceptional sharpness of their knives and rules regarding the method of cutting, kosher slaughter is as painless as modern techniques. But Mr Eisenmann was sceptical of the amendment, saying lawmakers seemed not to have accepted the evidence the Jewish community had provided so far.
Ironically, the only opposition to the new law in the Dutch parliament came from the country’s Christian parties. They sympathised with religious communities out of step with an increasingly secular majority.
“This proposal oversteps the boundaries of freedom of religion as we have always understood it in this country,” said parliamentarian Esme Wiegmann of the small left-wing ChristenUnie party.
The law was approved by a vote of 116 to 30.
