Dutch vote to ban religious slaughter of animals

A small step for a cow, but a giant leap for farm animal kind.

Let all nations on earth follow suit and soon. When those religious nuts of all flavors agree to give up any and all technology that has come since the year 700 AD, then I might consider allowing a religious exemption for barbaric slaughter. But if you are going to drive a car, use a phone, take modern medicine or have temperature controls, live in a non-mud home, then sorry, learn to eat meat that has been killed humanely.

H/T Snaphanen.dk

(Reuters) – The Dutch parliament voted on Tuesday to ban ritual slaughter of animals, a move strongly opposed by the country’s Muslim and Jewish minorities, but left a loophole that might let religious butchering continue.

The bill by the small Animal Rights Party, the first such group in Europe to win seats in a national parliament, passed the lower house of parliament by 116 votes to 30. It must be approved by the upper house before becoming law.

It stipulates that livestock must be stunned before being slaughtered, contrary to the Muslim halal and Jewish kosher laws that require animals to be fully conscious.

“This way of killing causes unnecessary pain to animals. Religious freedom cannot be unlimited,” said Marianne Thieme, head of the Animal Rights Party, said before the vote. “For us religious freedom stops where human or animal suffering begins.”

In a rare show of unity, the Netherlands’ Muslim and Jewish communities — numbering about 1 million and 40,000 respectively in a total population of 16 million — have condemned the proposed ban as a violation of their religious freedom.

“The very fact that there is a discussion about this is very painful for the Jewish community,” Netherlands Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs told Reuters.

“Those who survived the (second world) war remember the very first law made by the Germans in Holland was the banning of schechita or the Jewish way of slaughtering animals.”

Uca Octay of Rotterdam’s Islamic University said: “We will have to import halal meat from neighboring countries or find another way to meet the needs of the Muslim population.”

PAIN IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVE

The law said religious groups could continue ritual slaughter if they proved it was no more painful than stunning, but it was not clear how to do this. The Jewish community has challenged a study on animal pain used to support the ban.

“This is absolutely impossible to prove,” Jacobs said. “You can’t ask the animal how it feels afterwards.”

For the rest, please click through to the Reuters link at the top:

 

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

15 Replies to “Dutch vote to ban religious slaughter of animals”

  1. Meanwhile Holland still has a big bio-industry and in 10% of all cases the stunning fails. Oh yes, Eeyore, giant leap for animal kind.

  2. Wonderful if they can ban meat completely but that would be asking to much. If they can ban halal and kosher it might get people thinking and thus give up meat.

  3. As long as it’s both halal and kosher then whatever. Kosher meat is nasty, the jews should be thanking holland from freeing them from that.

    In jewish law and tradition religious laws are trumped by state law so they will either stop eating kosher meat or order it from outside the country.

    Muslims have the exact opposite tradition and laws. Their laws must always trump state laws. So they will continue to slaughter animals in halal ways untill caught and penalized, then continue to do so anyway untill they are caught and penaized again and so on. The penalizations that cant be avoided with bribes will just be considered an added cost of doing business.

    It follows that ONLY jewish slaughter within the netherlands will really be affected.

  4. Animal rights activist have closed down a couple of halal places in the uk. They claimed we were being racist! We close anyone down who hurts animals. Still there you have it.

  5. jjk999:

    Yes the question now lies in enforcement.
    Will they do what so many nations do, and enforce laws meant to stop brutality and aggression against the most law abiding and peaceful while allowing those for whom the law was meant to continue to break it with impunity out of fear, much like gun control laws in most of the world? Lets see if Holland now has the guts to give the law some teeth.

  6. To jjk999. Have you seen Kosher Meat, putz? A regular person couldn’t tell the difference unless you know what you are looking for. Maybe you should take your bigotry and shove where the sun don’t shine. The other thing you know nothing about Jewish Law and you know nothing about what a government can do. The Dutch Law is pure persecution. Something you like. You’ll only agree with a government if it does something that fits your predjudices (i.e. suffering from a short attention span?)

    As for you Eeyore claiming that something is modern and therefore good is not true. An example of why this truism is false is Hitlers campaign for Chancellor in 1932. One of the themes of his campaign was that he and the NSDAP were modern and wanted to wipe away ancient ideas of living. He was the first candidate anywhere that flew to campaign stops (instead of taking a train or a car). He nearly brought the world to a new dark age.

  7. Doc:

    You make an excellent straw man. I never said anything modern must be good and that has nothing to do with my point. I am saying that if someone wants an exception to a national law for reasons of religion then they should walk the walk and have to sacrifice all the modern amenities that seem to be curiously not contrary to religious law as it doesn’t pain them directly. When it doesn’t pain them but does our food animals suddenly it does matter to them. I say its all or nothing. We pass laws as a society for a reason. If they are bad laws then we fight to have them repealed or changed. I dislike many of the laws I see being passed as totalitarian, even if they make life better for me personally such as smoking bans in bars etc. But we are a nation and as such, we pass laws that reflect our collective conscience.

    Animal cruelty is something civilization has advanced enough to be able to afford to try and reduce just as modern medicine is used to reduce general suffering to all of us. Jews and Muslims like all people have to make choices. Live in place A, and accept the culture and laws of that place, or move to somewhere that suits your values. I’m certain that you would not move for example, to China and start demanding that all food stores immediately changed to suit your particular values even if it would be an improvement in China. You would be more culturally sensitive than that wouldn’t you?

    As for your Hitler reference its embarrassing. Hitler wore pants. I wear pants. Hitler had a dog. I have a dog. Hitler sometimes sat in the back of cars. I often sit in the back of cars. I guess that’s all you need to know about my opinions. I’m basically Hitler right?

    By the way, Doc Holiday is one of my favourite all time historical people. Excellent choice of nickname.

  8. Eeyore, have you ever heard of Temple Grandin? She is an expert on humane treatment of cattle. She says the following: “I was relieved and surprised to discover that the animals don’t even feel the super-sharp place as it touches their skin. They made no attempt to pull away. I felt peaceful and calm.” More skill is required for humane slaughter without stunning, Grandin observes, but Jewish religious law requires special implements and a very high level of skill. Muslim halal slaughter, according to Grandin, has no such safeguards.

  9. potb: That is interesting but not surprising really. The PR issue of what would appear to be a razor-sharp distinction (may Zeus forgive the pun) would be a very difficult one to sell however.

  10. @ Eeyore, So I’ve noticed 😉
    What I’m trying to say here is that there is a difference between the two of them. I’ve read many articles and books about this subjects for the last few months and I’ve watched all the debates about this. First of all, if you think that there is such a thing as ‘humane slaughtering’ you are a fool. I’ve watched those video’s and there is nothing humane about it. They hang the chicken up side down, try to drown it and electrocute it at the same time. With cows they use a metal pin (all automatic) and it goes wrong in 10% of all cases (at least here, don’t know about other countries). Each day about 1,2 animals are slaughtered this way.

  11. “Animal cruelty is something civilization has advanced enough to be able to afford to try and reduce just as modern medicine is used to reduce general suffering to all of us. Jews and Muslims like all people have to make choices. Live in place A, and accept the culture and laws of that place, or move to somewhere that suits your values”

    By the way, Jews have lived here for over 400 years. The whole kosher thing was never much of an issue. Because back in the seventies and eighties Muslims were slaughtering animals on their balconies and sometimes on the streets, the government decided to allow halal slaughtering. Because people are fed up with Muslims practices here, they are trying to stop it. They don’t realize that this will only affect Jewish practice. The ban will be overturned some day. Why? Because our demography says so (and no I’m not happy about that).

  12. potb:

    Yeah probably. Laws tend to impact only those who obey laws, or at least laws of this kind. The NDP will see to it that Muslims get an exception to any such ban in Canada much as religions in general get an exception to discrimination against gay people. Or was it an exception to hate speech or something? In any case its absurd to create a law, then make an exception to those who really want to break it and doubly so when its for supernaturalist reasons. If say, a behaviorist wanted to say something which offended gay people or Muslims you know what would happen, and that would be even if he could prove what he said stood on a foundation of solid science. The geneticist Bruce Lahn http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/sports/story.html?id=c09ef798-9659-4257-be3b-70ccba93b90e springs to mind.
    But if someone wants to say something that offends any group at all and they justify it by saying that they were given this information by Tinkerbelle while smoking a hookah on Mars, then it is protected.

    “Reason is not automatic, and those who do not accept it cannot be defeated by it”

    -Ayn Rand.

    This quote seems more and more important every day. I say we go back to a culture based on reason and build non-altars to Socrates and Plato and then we can argue the benefits of a vegetarian diet Vs. meat and what constitutes ‘humane’ and why it matters. Individual freedoms are axiomatic though. That should be the line.

  13. @ Eeyore
    “Laws tend to impact only those who obey laws, or at least laws of this kind”

    How come you say it so much better than I do? 😉
    Now when they first announced that they were discussing a ban Muslims said: okay, well will just do it in the bathroom then, Jews said: okay, either we leave or we will have to become vegetarian. For me this is a big difference. Muslims KNOW they are going to get away with it.

    Now I’m an atheist and I’m all for free speech (what is it by the way with Canada and that Human Rights Commission, sorry but it’s just embarrassing) and I think you are absolutely right about the whole offending thing, but I don’t like what’s beneath the surface in my country. On of the liberal parties actually wants to ban religious school, they basically want all kids to go to public schools. Reason? Yes. But one truth and one truth only? No. It’s fine for people to think different things and we should all be allowed to express our opinions. This goes for ALL people.

  14. Best Speech You Will Ever Hear – Gary Yourofsky on the
    TheAnimalHolocaust channel on youtube.

    Here is a guy who tells the veggie side of the story. You have heard the meat eaters. Now come on give this guy a chance. He converts two or three people per day into giving up meat eating. Plus if you give up meat then you will never buy halal without knowing it and thus end up supporting the jihad. Halal means animal torture and jihad financing. Give up meat and you will never be implicated ever again even unwittingly.

  15. There are many plants who process meat through halal slaughter methods, especially in Alberta and Ontario. Thousands per day, because it is a multi-million dollar business market, and I still have not had time to investigate further, Over 20percent of the beef is slaughtered by religious methods. There is some type of legislation that prevents any meat slaughtered by regular methods to be labelled as halal, (naturally because these extremist groups demand it), However, there is no legislation for the overflow, not purchased or marketed as halal, to be put into the regular flow and end up on the store shelves. It will likely have the same effects as all the imported food from mexico,,,,yuk, all cultivated with the impurities of their water irrigation and fertilizers, then causing all sorts of health implications…..sore throat and tongue syndrom, love those mexican grapes eh?
    People eating halal meat—resulting in masses of crazed people wandering around like zombies after eating voodoo blessed beef…
    And can’t you hardly wait, with all the provinces now controlling the intake of immigrants, and the majority coming from guess where, yes, that is correct, Pakistan, and guees whaqt, those would be likely uh huh, islamic, There will likely be more and more demand for voodoo meat in this country, and of course there will be a huge export market.