The legal aspects of ritual slaughter include the regulation of slaughterhouses, butchers, and religious personnel involved with traditional shechita (Jewish) and dhabiĥa (Islamic). Regulations also may extend to butchery products sold in accordance with kashrut and halal religious law. Governments regulate ritual slaughter, primarily through legislation and administrative law. In addition, compliance with oversight of ritual slaughter is monitored by governmental agencies and, on occasion, contested in litigation.
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In Western countries, law reaches into every stage of ritual slaughter, from the slaughtering of livestock to the sale of kosher or halal meat.
In the United States, for example, courts have ruled that kosher butchers may be excluded from collective bargaining units,[1] a Jewish beit din (court) may forbid trade with disapproved butchers,[2] retail sellers implicitly stipulate their compliance with rabbinic courts,[3] a state law (NY) may incorporate a rabbinical ruling on kosher labeling,[4] and kashrut symbols may be subject to trade infringement laws.[5]
Due to differences between ritual and mainstream slaughtering practices, kosher slaughter may be exempted from animal welfare laws. For instance, in the United States, the Humane Slaughter Act (7 U.S.C. section 1901) exempts ritual slaughter and this exemption has been upheld as constitutional.[6]
The kosher food industry has challenged regulations as an infringement on religious freedom.[7]
Secular governments also have sought to restrict ritual slaughter not intended for food consumption. In the U.S., the most prominent such case is Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah. In this case, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled unconstitutional a local Florida ban on Santería ritual animal sacrifice.
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According to Jewish law and to Muslim law, animals must be slaughtered by a single cut to the throat. Stunning is not allowed.[8] However, many Muslim authorities accept reversible stunning, such as electrostunning, prior to the cut.[9]
In the 1880s anti-Semites joined forces with Animal Protection Societies to campaign for anti-shechita legislation to be passed in Switzerland Germany and Scandinavia. [10]
Some rulers banned all killing on their land for some period each year, included ritual slaughter.
After conquering Bago in 1559, King Bayinnaung prohibited the practice of halal, specifically, killing food animals in the name of a god. The halal was also forbidden by King Alaungpaya in the 18th century.
According to the White History of the Tenfold Virtuous Dharma (Arban Buyantu Nom-un Caġan Teüke), Altan Khan ordered the religious code Arban Buyantu Nom-un Cagaja prohibited human and animal sacrifice.
In Switzerland shechitah was forbidden throughout the whole country in 1893 after having been banned in the cantons of Aargau and St Gallen in 1867 after plebiscites, and later a ban was introduced in the whole of Switzerland after a plebiscite at Federal level. The system of voting on individual policies using referendums (plebiscites) had only recently been introduced. [3] [4]
Norway banned religious slaughter without pre stunning in 1930. Germany banned shechita three months after Hitler came to power in 1933, Sweden banned it in 1937 and a ban was enforced in Poland with the Nazi invasion in 1939 (see section below on Nazi Germany).
Bans introduced by the German Third Reich and by Mussolini were removed by Allied Command when the Allies liberated Europe.[11]
Opponents of ritual slaughter bans argue that the practice is humane, that no scientific evidence exists to prove that ritual slaughter causes more suffering to animals than other methods. Ritual slaughter is one of two methods of slaughter defined as humane by the federal Humane Slaughter Act in the United States.
The issue is complicated by allegations of antisemitism and xenophobia. Lastly, recent debate in Switzerland has been contentious, in part, because of comparisons by a prominent activist (convicted several times of hate crimes against Jews) between kosher slaughter and the methods used by Nazis in concentration camps. (The statement: "Every day is Treblinka for the animals" is by Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer.)
"One of the first enactments of the Nazis in 1933 was to outlaw the Jewish method of slaughter", said Rabbi Yehuda Brodie, registrar of the Manchester Beth Din.[12]
The Nazi propaganda film Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), designed to sow hatred for Jews, contains one scene that utterly distorts the way animals are killed in accordance with Jewish law, depicting Jews as rejoicing in the suffering of animals.[13]
The European Union directive, "European Convention for the Protection of Animals for Slaughter",[14] generally requires stunning before slaughter, but allows member states to allow exemptions for religious slaughter: "Each Contracting Party may authorize derogations from the provisions concerning prior stunning in the following cases: – slaughtering in accordance with religious rituals ...". The only member state of the European Union currently banning ritual slaughter without prior stunning of the animal is Sweden. Switzerland, Norway and Iceland (not EU members) are the only other countries to ban slaughter without prior stunning of the animal in Europe.
Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides for a right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion which includes the freedom to manifest a religion or belief in, inter alia, practice and observance, subject only to such restrictions as are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society."
In May 2009 the European Parliament voted in favour of allowing ritual slaughter in member states.[15]
Finland's law on slaughter dates from the 1930s and allows post-stunning thereby providing certain legislative protection for some forms of Muslim slaughter. Dhabhiha (halal slaughter) is practised in Finland, but there are not sufficient resources for Jewish slaughter, and all kosher meat is imported.[16]
In Jewish Liturgical Association Cha'are Shalom Ve Tsedek v. France, 27 June 2000,[17](App No. 27417/95) the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights interpreted Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights in a case involving a lawsuit by Glatt kosher slaughterers against a French law recognizing a non-Glatt association (the ACIP) as having the exclusive right to conduct Jewish ritual slaughter in France. The Court stated that ritual slaughter is a practice covered by the Article 9's guarantee of the right to manifest religious observance:
The Court then clarified the scope of Article 9, holding that it applies only to restrictions which would prevent consumers from being able to obtain ritually slaughtered meat:
Thus, under the Court of Human Rights' interpretation (not unanimous) of the European Convention on Human Rights in the Cha'are Shalom case, restrictions on ritual slaughter are permissible, but only if they do not prevent religious adherents from obtaining religiously slaughtered meat.
On January 15, 2002 the German Federal Constitutional Court held that the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany provides a broader guarantee of human rights in the area of religious freedom than the European Convention on Human Rights. In an appeal by a Turkish citizen who practiced Islamic ritual slaughter, the German court struck down Germany's former ban on ritual slaughter,[18] holding that the German Basic Law's guarantee of religious freedom prohibited the German government from applying a law requiring stunning prior to slaughter to observant Muslims who practice ritual slaughter for religious reasons, and that the Basic Law's guarantee of religious freedom applies to slaughterers as well as consumers of meat.[19][20] The German court held that under Article 2.1 of the German Basic Law, religious slaughterers have a distinct fundamental right to practice a religiously-recognized vocation. It also explained that merely permitting importation of ritually slaughtered meat is inadequate to protect the religious rights of individuals under Articles 4.1 and 4.2 of the German Basic Law (Constitution) because personal contact is important to ensuring compliance with religious requirements. It held that an exemption from laws that conflicted with this was therefore mandated:
It is true that the consumption of imported meat makes such renunciation [of meat-eating] dispensable; however, due to the fact that in this case, personal contact with the butcher and the confidence that goes with such contact do not exist, the consumption of imported meat is fraught with the insecurity whether the meat really complies with the commandments of Islam....Under these circumstances, an exemption from the mandatory stunning of warm-blooded animals before their blood is drained cannot be precluded if the intention connected with this exemption is to facilitate, on the one hand, the practice of a profession with a religious character, which is protected by fundamental rights, and, on the other hand, the observation of religious dietary laws by the customers of the person practicing the occupation in question. Without such exemptions, the fundamental rights of those who want to perform slaughter without stunning as their occupation would be unreasonably restricted, and the interests of the protection of animals would, without a sufficient constitutional justification, be given priority in a one-sided manner.[19]
The Netherlands at present does not ban ritual slaughter, although legislation to these ends is pending. The country now allows some forms of ritual slaughter due to freedom of religion. The Netherlands, like Switzerland, has in the past considered extending the ban in order to prohibit importing kosher products. Rabbi Melchior, who was serving as Israeli deputy foreign minister at the time of the Dutch debate, said "they simply don't want foreigners and they don't want Jews."[21] In February 2011, a majority in parliament took position against a proposed ban on ritual slaughter without stunning, citing a Council of State advice that deems such a ban in violation of freedom of religion.[22] However, in June 2011 the Dutch House of Representatives passed a law, proposed by the Party for the Animals, banning ritual slaughter without stunning.[23] The law provides for a temporary (for a maximum of five years) exemption from the ban if an applicant can show scientific evidence, subject to specific conditions, that the proposed method of unstunned slaughter does not cause the animal more distress than regular slaughter does.[24] Despite a comfortable passage through the lower house, a majority in the Senate came out against the proposal when it was being debated there. As such it is highly unlikely that the proposal shall become law. [25]
Animal welfare is controlled under the provisions of the Animal Welfare Act 32/2007, of November 7th. Article 6 of the act concerns slaughter of animals, including ritual slaughter:
"When the slaughter of animals is carried out according to the rites of Churches, religious denominations or communities registered in the Register of Religious Entities,[26] and the stunning requirements are inconsistent with the rules of the respective religious rite, the competent authorities will not demand the compliance with such requirements provided that the procedure is carried out within the limits referred to in Article 3 of the Organic Law no. 7 of 5 July 1980 on Religious Freedom. In any case, the slaughter according to whatever religious rite shall be carried out under the supervision and according to the instructions of the official veterinarian. The slaughterhouse shall notify the competent authority that it will carry out this kind of slaughter in order to have it registered for this purpose, without prejudice to the authorisation provided for in the European Community legislation."[27]
All animals except fish must be stunned before slaughter.[28][29]
In the rest of Europe the legal situation of ritual slaughter differs from country to country. While countries that had Nazis and antisemites in parliament and in military dictatorships in occupied Europe in the 1930s and during the war introduced bans, democratic countries - the US, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands - introduced legislation protecting shehitah.[30] when it was seen that an international racist campaign was afoot.
Prior to the rise of National Socialism in Germany, bans only existed in Switzerland, Norway and Saxony. When Hitler came to power, the German National Socialist government introduced a ban in the whole of Germany in 1933, and in Poland when it invaded in 1939. Bans were introduced in all the countries which the Nazis occupied, as well as in the countries of the Axis allies, Italy and Hungary. These were removed by order of the Allied Military authorities by a special order, and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms included sections on Religious Freedom that in the preliminary discussions, referred specifically to religious ritual slaughter bans.[31]
[35] The Netherlands is one of the countries that introduced legislative protection for shehitah.
Complete information up to 1946 on every ban introduced in every country in Europe in the original languages and in English translation is to be found in Religious Freedom: The Right to Practice Shehitah Munk, Berman together with references to the original debates and an analysis that claims that up until the rise of Hitler in 1933, the international campaign to introduce ritual slaughter/ shehitah bans had failed because the vast majority of countries where legislation had been proposed rejected the legislation realising the involvement of anti-Semites in the campaign and enacted legislation to protect Jewish and Muslim slaughter. The League of Nations supported the Jewish Community of Upper Silesia against Hitler in rejecting the attempts by German officials to confiscate shehitah knives and ban Jewish slaughter.
The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms has sections on Religious Freedom. The preparatory discussions for these dealt specifically with bans imposed by Hitler on Jewish and Muslim religious slaughter, and those countries that are signatories to the Convention and have bans today are not abiding by the convention.
Norway copied the Swiss campaign to ban ritual slaughter. The same arguments were presented as in the Swiss campaign and an appeal was made by the Jewish community to the Norwegian parliament not to introduce the legislation. After the ban was introduced, Norwegian Jews imported kosher meat from Sweden until it was banned there too.
In the 1890s, protests were raised in the Norwegian press against the practice of shechita. The Jewish community responded to these objections by assuring the public that the method was in fact humane. Efforts to ban shechita put sincere humane society activists in league with antisemitic individuals. In particular, Jonas Søhr used the cause as a means to attack not just the slaughter methods of the small Jewish community in Norway, but also the community itself. Those opposing the ban included Fridtjof Nansen, but the division on the issue crossed party lines in all mainstream parties, except the Farmer's Party, which was principled in its opposition to schechita.[36]
The Food Health regulations were controversial, especially the stunning requirement, as they would lead to a fundamental change in the meat producing market. A committee was commissioned on February 11, 1927 that consulted numerous experts and visited a slaughterhouse in Copenhagen. Its majority favored the changes and found support in the Department of Agriculture and the parliamentary agriculture committee. Those who opposed a ban spoke of religious tolerance, and also found that schechita was no more inhumane than other slaughter methods. C J Hambro was one of those most appalled by the antisemitic invective, noting that "where animal rights are protected to an exaggerated extent, it usually is done with the help of human sacrifice" [37]
The former chief rabbi of Norway, Michael Melchior, argues that antisemitism is one motive for the bans "I won't say this is the only motivation, but it's certainly no coincidence that one of the first things Nazi Germany forbade was kosher slaughter. I also know that during the original debate on this issue in Norway, where shechitah has been banned since 1930, one of the parliamentarians said straight out, 'If they don't like it, let them go live somewhere else.'"[38]
The Swiss banned kosher slaughter in 1893.[39]
"In Switzerland, a ban on kosher slaughter has been enforced since 1897, when the people supported this measure through a referendum with clear anti-Semitic undertones. At the time, Jews had recently been granted full civil rights and some Swiss citizens feared an invasion of Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe, who they considered to be unassimilable, foreign and unreliable. By banning the performance of a core Jewish ritual, the Swiss people found a disguised way to limit the immigration of Jews into Switzerland."[13]
According to the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour "Ritual slaughter (the bleeding to death of animals that have not first been stunned) was made illegal in the country in 1893; however, a 1978 Law on the Protection of Animals explicitly allows for the importation of kosher and halal meat. Imported from France and Germany, this meat is available in the country at comparable prices. In 2003, a popular initiative to protect animal rights and prohibit the import of meat from animals bled without stunning was filed; in December 2005, however, the sponsors withdrew their initiative before it had been submitted to a national vote after Parliament adopted a revision of the Law on the Protection of Animals."[40]
There was a backlash against a proposal to lift the ban in 2002.[39] "In 2002, when the Swiss government attempted to lift the century-old ban, animal rights activists, political groups (on the left and the right), and unaffiliated citizens expressed strong opposition. They called shechita practice a "barbaric" and "sanguinary", an "archaic tradition from the time of the ghettos", and asked Jews to either become vegetarian or leave the country."[13]
Switzerland have considered extending the ban in order to prohibit importing kosher products. The Swiss Animal Association called for a referendum on banning kosher imports.[21] Christopher Blocher, a cabinet minister for the Swiss People's Party, has supported calls to ban the import of kosher and halal meat.[41]
"A recent survey showed more than three-quarters of the population said they would like to see their government ban even the import of kosher meat. Erwin Kessler, an animal rights activist, has been campaigning vigorously for this. He's 40,000 short of the 100,000 signatures needed to trigger a referendum to completely ban kosher and halal meat entering Switzerland. Kessler has inflamed the controversy by publicly comparing kosher slaughter to the methods used by Nazis in concentration camps, but denies that his motives are, in fact, anti-semitic."[42]
"Should a proposed ban on the import of kosher meat be accepted by the Swiss people in 2006, it will effectively force Jews who observe kashrut to abstain from the consumption of meat. Muslims will also be affected by this move."[13]
The United States is one of the countries that has legislation for protection of shechita (Jewish) and dhabihah (Muslim) ritual slaughter. The Humane Slaughter Act defines ritual slaughter as one of two humane methods of slaughter.[43]
Since 1958 the United States has prohibited the shackling and hoisting of cattle without stunning them first.
In Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah 508 U.S. 520 (1993), the United States Supreme Court struck down a ban imposed by the City of Hialeah, Florida, on Santería religious animal sacrifices practiced by the Church as contravening the religious freedoms guaranteed by the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution of the United States. While the City of Hialeah claimed that its ban on ritual slaughter "not for the primary purpose of food consumption" was motivated by concerns for animal welfare and public health, the Supreme Court held that ample evidence showed that it was in fact motivated by animosity to the Santería religion and a desire to suppress it:
The Court also found that the city's proffered reasons for its ban simply did not explain or justify it.
The United States Supreme Court held that animal sacrifice and ritual slaughter were practices protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty and that government could not enact targeted legislation suppressing religious practices under a guise of protecting animal welfare or promoting public health.
Temple Grandin, who is both an animal welfare activist and the leading American designer of commercial slaughterhouses, has outlined techniques for humane ritual slaughter.[44] She considers shackling and hoisting of animals for slaughter to be inhumane, and has developed alternative approaches usable in production plants. Grandin has coordinated this with the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative movement in the United States, and in 2000 the Committee voted to accept her approach, ruling that "Now that kosher, humane slaughter using upright pens is both possible and widespread, we find shackling and hoisting to be a violation of Jewish laws forbidding cruelty to animals and requiring that we avoid unnecessary dangers to human life. As the CJLS, then, we rule that shackling and hoisting should be stopped."[45]
In an investigation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, undercover video was obtained of kosher slaughtering practices at a major kosher slaughterhouse run by Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa.[46] The methods used there involved clamping the animals into a box which is then inverted for slaughter, followed by partial dismemberment of the animal before it was dead. Those methods have been condemned as unnecessarily cruel by PETA and others, including Grandin and the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, but are endorsed by the Orthodox Union,[47] which supervises the slaughterhouse. An investigation by the USDA resulted in some minor operational changes. A lawsuit under Iowa law is pending. Grandin's comment was "I thought it was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. I couldn't believe it. I've been in at least 30 other kosher slaughter plants, and I had never ever seen that kind of procedure done before. ... I've seen kosher slaughter really done right, so the problem here is not kosher slaughter. The problem here is a plant that is doing everything wrong they can do wrong".[48] In 2006 the Orthodox Union, Temple Grandin and Agriprocessors had reportedly resolved their problems.[49] In 2008, though, Grandin reported that Agriprocessors had again become "sloppy" in their slaughter operation and was "in the bottom 10%" of slaughterhouses.[50]