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Peter Dejong / AP
A ritually-slaughtered lamb is delivered at a halal butcher shop on the market in The Hague, Netherlands, Tuesday Dec. 13.
AMSTERDAM -- Political support for a proposed ban on slaughtering animals without stunning them first appeared to crumble Tuesday as the Dutch senate debated legislation that Muslim and Jewish groups say violates their religious rights.
The ban — proposed by an animal rights party and widely supported by Dutch voters — passed Parliament's lower house by a 116-30 margin in June, raising an international outcry from religious groups.
Although senators will not vote until Dec. 20, it appeared from Tuesday's debate that several parties that initially backed the ban in parliament — including the Netherlands' two largest — have changed their mind.
If the Netherlands does outlaw the slaughtering practices that make meat kosher for Jews or halal for Muslims, it will be the second country after New Zealand to do so in recent years. It would join Switzerland, the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, whose bans are mostly traceable to pre-World War II anti-Semitism.
Speaking first, Labor senator Nico Schrijver said his party now has "many questions" about the bill, including asking why it "so specifically aims its arrows at the rather small number of ritual slaughterers and why not large-scale industrial slaughter, which involves 500 million animals per year?"
"It seems to me that there may be much more effective, and less far-reaching methods that achieve the same goal" of improving animal welfare, Schrijver said, citing better education for slaughterers and better conditions in slaughterhouses.
Muslims, mostly immigrants from Turkey and Morocco, represent about a million of the 16 million Dutch population. The once-strong Jewish community numbers around 50,000 after most were deported and killed by the Nazis during World War II.
In both religions, tradition prescribes that animals' throats be cut swiftly with a razor-sharp knife while they are still conscious, so that they bleed to death quickly.
Support for the ban comes both from left-leaning voters who see this technique as inhumane, and from social conservatives who see it as foreign and barbaric.
Outside the debate, Esther Ouwehand of the tiny Party for the Animals, which proposed the ban, said it was unjust to inflict "extra suffering on animals to satisfy religious opinion."
The ban's most influential backer has been the Netherlands' anti-Islam Freedom Party.
"Do we want such practices in a civilized country as ours?" asked Freedom senator Marjolein Faber, after describing a worst-case scenario of a panicked animal taking six minutes to lose consciousness after a botched ritual slaughter.
The Royal Dutch Veterinary Association says it believes slaughtering cattle in particular while still conscious inflicts unnecessary suffering.
But Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, said there is "no scientific evidence" that religious slaughter, performed properly, is more painful for animals than stunning.
He said the law should be voted down in the name of freedom of religion.
"If this law is passed in a country known for its tolerant and open society, it could result in a very dangerous domino effect that could spread to other parts of Europe," he said.
Among the two parties in the Netherlands' governing coalition, the Christian Democrats opposed the ban from the beginning out of concern for the rights of religious minorities.
The pro-business VVD party, the country's largest, also now appears unlikely to support the ban.
VVD senator Sybe Schaap slammed the bill for "ethical absolutism" and said offering incentives for slaughterhouses to improve their practices would have a more positive effect than a ban.
The Dutch undersecretary for Economic Affairs Henk Blekers has said the Cabinet will only take a position on the bill after the Senate vote.
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Finally something more than one religious group can agree on. "Don't mess with my food."
One day there might be Hindu and Buddhist influence and no animals will be killed at all. Especially when population to food ratios are so imbalanced and grazing animals take up too much land for crops. Now that's progress.
Sounds like a good policy. Countries should follow sound secular regulations instead of religious dogma. There are Santeria nuts in Florida doing all kinds of bizarre things with animals under the auspices of religious freedom.
Just wanted to repeat that in case anyone missed it in the article. Interesting, huh?
Meh. Christian democrats have a bigger voice over there. Christian republicans belonging to the moral majority have a monopoly on that over in the US.
Emphasis on Christian, not Democrat - since Democrats of any stripe in Europe bear no resemblance to Democrats in the U.S. No comparison whatsoever. The point was that a party claiming to be Christian - imagine that! a political party actually built on religion! - was one of the tolerant ones on this issue.
Good for the animals. I'm for people to practice their religions as long as it is adapted to the host country's laws. That means in Europe no sacrificing animals, no cruelty to animals, no five prayers a day, no face veils, etc... and no bombing market places.
Banning ritual slaughter of animals is NOT "good policy", since prohibiting the slaughter of animals in proscribed ways for the purpose of eating in fact prohibits those who pursue the practice from participating fully in society.
In other words, the purpose of such laws is to deliberately harm other human beings to the point where they feel unwelcomed, denigrated and marginalized by the rest of society.
It's a bad idea.
Very few muslims feel marginalized in the middle east. Very few Jews feel marginalized in Israel.
A place for everybody and everybody in their place seems like a good policy to me.
Maybe the native americans feel that way !
but then who would use their casinos?
Causing animals needless suffering just to appease those that believe in religious myths and superstitions is cruel. It is time that such barbaric rituals are outlawed.
http://oukosher.org/index.php/common/article/setting_the_record_straight_on_kosher_slaughter/
Kosher mammals and birds are slaughtered by a special procedure called shechitah, in which the animal's throat is quickly, precisely and painlessly cut with a sharp, perfectly smooth knife (called a chalaf) by a shochet -- a highly trained, Torah-observant and G-d-fearing individual.
Kosher slaughter, shechita, involves cutting the trachea and esophagus with a sharp, flawless knife. At the same time, the carotid arteries, which are the primary supplier of blood to the brain, are severed. The profound loss of blood and the massive drop in blood pressure render the animal insensate almost immediately. Studies done by Dr. H. H. Dukes at the Cornell University School of Veterinary Medicine indicate that the animal is unconscious within seconds of the incision.
It should be kept in mind that in a non-kosher plant, when the animal is killed by a shot with a captive bolt to the brain, it often has to be re-shot, sometimes up to six times, before the animal collapses. The USDA permits up to a five percent initial failure rate.
Kosher slaughter, by principle, and as performed today in the United States, is humane. Indeed, as PETA itself has acknowledged, shechita is more humane than the common non-kosher form of shooting the animal in the head with a captive bolt,
Perfect explanation, well done.
The Netherlands just want to drive out the few Jews that are left in the country.
Another reason for the existence of Israel.
For all you "Citizens of the World" out there: there are still a few sovereign countries in the West.....
Where is PETA when you really need them?
Too bad the civilized are grouped together with the savages.
I support the ban. I also live in Wisconsin where the deer hunt by rifle recently took place. I cringe when I hear stories by coworkers of tracking wounded animals for long distances. One told of shooting a deer that was already wounded by some other hunter apparently days before. And this is sport? Okay, in both situations the animal is consumed for food, but do we have to get our food that way? Sad, very sad.
Face it, we're animals. We're predators. We hunt and eat other animals. Ideally a hunter would get off a good shot and bring the animal down right away. I suppose this doesn't happen all the time due to bad luck or inexperience on the part of the hunter. Unfortunately you can do anything about bad luck and inexperience can only be ocrrect by practice.
I have no issue with hunters. If deer hunts were banned you would quickly have an overpopulation problem and those same deer you're trying to protect would be starving to death and getting hit on the freeways, possibly causing serious injuries or even death to the humans who hit them with their cars. We're already dealing with this issue here in NJ, with some municipalities having to resort to net and bolt and sharpshooters to cull the herd.
And, I suppose hunting is painless and instantaneous, because all hunters are expert shots. If you ban ritual slaughter for food, not just for the sake of killing as some rituals are performed, what's next? Animals are food, whether you shoot it, cut it, or bolt it to death.
Dur its aimed at the muslims, not the jews...1 mil, vs 50k, do the math.
This article confirms the axiom that good people will do good and bad people will do bad however, for a good person to say something wicked or to perform an evil act, they need religion.
Kosher butchering is a hell of a lot more humane than factory farming. It's whole intention is to cause as little pain to the animal as possible. What because you see more blood hit the floor with a slit throat you think it hurts more than a bolt to the head? And what abuut when someone batches the bolting and they have to repeat it up to 6 times before the animal collapses?
Of course, instituionalized religious persecution has been proven over and over again to lead to truly evil acts of mankind...And those are just as often perpetrated by secularists as they are religious freaks.
Who ever said that religion is not a form of government?