Opinion Columnist
Denmark’s ban on kosher and halal meat slaughtering was put into effect last month and has since been met with significant religious backlash. Kosher and halal is considered the “fit and proper” ritual of meat slaughtering for Jewish and Muslim people, respectively.
For meat to be kosher, it has to involve a method of ritualistic slaughter called “shechitah,” requiring the animal to be conscious while receiving a “quick, deep stroke across the throat with a perfectly sharp blade with no nicks or unevenness,” according to a lecture by the Meat Science department at Texas A&M University. This slaughtering method, along with the identical halal method “dhabihah,” is considered to be the most humane as it renders the animal unconsciousness within seconds.
In contrast to this, Denmark’s government has decided to ban religious slaughtering of animals in order to adhere to European regulations, which require stunning before slaughter but allow exemptions on religious grounds. Stunning is the method of knocking out an animal before slaughter, which can be done through electrical, gas or percussive stunning.
“Animal rights come before religion,” Dan Jorgensen, Danish Minister for Agriculture and Food, said in defense of eliminating the exemption.
In response to this statement, outraged religious groups around the world argued that the ban goes against the principle of religious freedom.
“One can only wonder if the Danish government is seeking to make life so difficult for Muslims and Jews that many will decide to leave the country,” Dr. Sayyid Syeed, director of the Islamic Society of North America, said, according to a news brief by the Global Jewish News Source.
While I am all for religious freedom, Syeed’s statement seems melodramatic when you consider that Denmark is recognized as a socially secularized country. The ban is an obvious declaration of secularism in a place that has already, for the most part, declared itself as such.
Disproving Syeed’s point further, there have even been several Danish religious leaders who have argued that the law will not actually affect religious practices of halal and kosher slaughtering.
“Danish Islamic leaders had issued a religious decree several years ago saying that animals stunned before slaughter were considered halal in Denmark,” Khalil Jaffar, an imam at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Copenhagen, said in an article by the Huffington Post last month.
Enforcing a law requiring animals to be unconscious before slaughter may be considered more humane, but it is curious to me how a country bold enough to take such a stand on animal mistreatment could have allowed for the public dismemberment of an innocent animal less than two weeks prior to that decision.
Many are still protesting last month’s killing and dissection of a healthy baby giraffe named Marius in front of a crowd of children at the Copenhagen Zoo. Marius was publicly butchered and fed to lions “because of a duty to avoid inbreeding,” according to a CNN article by Bharati Naik and Marie-Louise Gumachian.
As much as I support animal rights, I find it hard to believe that Denmark’s ban on kosher and halal slaughtering is doing anything remarkable for the humane treatment of animals country-wide. The good news for Muslims and Jews in Denmark is that they can still import meat certified as kosher and halal from foreign sources.
Regarding animal rights, however, I first and foremost agree with Andrew Brown for the Guardian when he says, “the slaughter of animals at the end of their lives is of far less ethical importance than the way they are treated beforehand.”
arildefonso@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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