From The Independent (UK)
A Belgian ban on the Muslim and Jewish ways of ritually slaughtering animalswent into effect on New Year’s Day, as tensions grow across Europe over the balance between animal welfare and religious freedom.
With both animal welfare advocates and right-wing nationalists pushing to ban ritual slaughter, religious minorities in Belgium and other countries fear they are the targets of bigotry under the guise of animal protection.
“It is impossible to know the true intentions of people,” said Yaakov David Schmahl, a senior rabbi in Antwerp.
“Unless people state clearly what they have in mind, but most anti-Semites don’t do that.”
Laws across Europe and European Union regulations require that animals be rendered insensible to pain before slaughter.
For larger animals, stunning before slaughter usually means using a “captive bolt” device that fires a metal rod into the brain; for poultry it usually means an electric shock. Animals can also be knocked out with gas.
But slaughter by Muslim halal and Jewish kosher rules requires that an animal be in perfect health – which religious authorities say rules out stunning it first – and be killed with a single cut to the neck that severs critical blood vessels.
