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Should elite European officials outlaw Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughter for meat?

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Should elite European officials outlaw Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughter for meat?

THE QUESTION:

Should Europeans outlaw ritual slaughter for meat practiced by Judaism and Islam as cruelty to animals?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

With such unprecedented political mayhem, Americans can be forgiven for barely noticing important events overseas.

The Guy, who believes threats to religious freedom warrant especially close attention, highlights a Dec. 17 ruling by the Court of Justice, the highest tribunal in the European Union (which covers 27 member nations with the departure of Great Britain). Readers will want to check out this recent Ira Rifkin post on this topic: “EU hypocrisy? Foie gras and factory farming continue, but kosher and halal traditions nixed.”

The decision, on referral from Belgium’s Constitutional Court, approved a regional statute mandating that animals be stunned before they are slaughtered for meat. This requirement directly pits animal-welfare advocates against Judaism and Islam, in which long-standing tradition allows observant believers to eat only meat from ritual slaughter, which forbids such stunning. European Jews and Muslims plan to appeal the decision, which could influence policies in other nations.

The court acknowledged that religious liberty is important, but on balance stated that the crackdown in Belgium occurs in “an evolving societal and legislative context which is characterized by an increasing awareness of the issue of animal welfare.” Several European nations already require stunning before slaughtering. (In the United States, statutes require stunning but allow for religious exemptions.)

Adding to the emotions in Europe, this dispute brings to mind that in 1933 Germany’s new Nazi-influenced regime prohibited Jewish slaughter on grounds of the stunning problem. More recently, this argument has been employed by Islamophobes.

The Conference of European Rabbis, which represents believers in 40 nations, said such prohibitions “put Jewish life at risk.” Omer Yankelevitch, a member of Israel’s parliament and the government diaspora affairs minister, wrote similarly in the Jerusalem Post last week. He said the European Union is violating freedom of religion and “harms the viability of Jewish communities in Europe,” so intense diplomatic efforts will be undertaken to respect the age-old observance.

Those who enjoy eating meat may give barely a thought to the methods used to produce it, although perhaps some reflected on this reality when COVID outbreaks brought attention to slaughterhouse conditions.


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EU hypocrisy? Foie gras and factory farming continue, but kosher and halal traditions nixed

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EU hypocrisy? Foie gras and factory farming continue, but kosher and halal traditions nixed

My fantasy very best self adheres to a strictly vegan diet. That means consuming no foods from members of the animal kingdom.

No meat, no eggs, no fish, no dairy, and just for consistency’s sake, no honey or even vitamin supplements containing traces of animal products. My fantasy very best self believes a plant-based diet to be best for me based on ethical, environmental, and health considerations (I’ve had serious heart issues).

But as you’ve probably already deduced, my current best self falls way short of my fantasy best self. While I rarely eat red meat (a couple of times a year at most), I regularly eat poultry, fish, eggs and dairy. So I’m by no means there yet.

When I do eat animal flesh, however, I restrict myself to animals in accord with traditional Judaism’s dietary protocols. That means I won’t eat pork or shell fish and won’t mix meat with dairy at the same meal. My wife and I also restrict our consumption to organic, free-range animal products. It also means that the allowed meats I do eat must be slaughtered in accordance with kosher guidelines.

As a theologically liberal Jew, I do not do all this because I believe HaShem — God — has directly commanded me to do so. I do this as a way to sustain my Jewish identity and as a voluntary spiritual discipline.

Which is why recent news out of Europe concerning the outlawing of kosher slaughtering protocols caught my attention. Journalists should note that traditional Muslims, who adhere to a similar slaughtering protocol, are also impacted by the European Union court ruling.

Here’s the gist of the issue, courtesy of a December story from JTA, the international Jewish news service:

(JTA) – The European Union’s highest court has upheld Belgium’s bans on slaughtering animals without first stunning them, a ruling that confirms the prohibition on the production of kosher and halal meat in parts of Belgium and clears a path for additional bans across Europe.

Israel’s ambassador to Belgium called the ruling “a blow to Jewish life in Europe.”


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Kosher sort-of shrimp and cheeseburgers: Do plant-based foods violate spirit of biblical law?

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Back in my Rocky Mountain days, in the 1980s, I heard an Orthodox rabbi give a fascinating talk with a title that went something like this: “The quest for the kosher cheeseburger.”

His thesis: If the result of this quest is a cheeseburger — mixing meat with a milk product — then it’s not kosher. If you end up with something that is kosher, then it isn’t a real cheeseburger. So what’s the point?

The Orthodox rabbi was using the “kosher cheeseburger” as a symbol of the efforts that many Jews make to blur the line between assimilating into what can, at times, be a hostile culture and following the traditions of their ancient faith. Can modern Jewish believers create a golden cheeseburger and eat it, too?

This is an essentially spiritual question, but it’s a question that takes on a whole new meaning with the explosion of attention now being given to plant-based meat substitutes (note the blitz of ads for Burger King’s new Impossible Whooper).

The Washington Post business team recently covered this trend and did a fine job of digging into these religious questions, starting with the headline: “Shalt thou eat an Impossible Burger? Religious doctrine scrambles to catch up to new food technology.” It’s rare to see scripture in a business lede, but this one was right on point — focusing on on a symbolic food that is totally out of bounds in Jewish tradition.

You think a kosher cheeseburger is a wild idea? How about kosher shrimp?

Leviticus 11 contains a zoo’s worth of animals. The hyrax and the monitor lizard. The katydid is there, as is the gecko. And it ends: “You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten.”

Dietary restrictions are woven into religious texts, the Old Testament and the New, the Koran, the Vedas and the Upanishads. Some are mercifully practical, as in the law of necessity in Islamic jurisprudence: “That which is necessary makes the forbidden permissible.”

Now, Tyson executives are seeking certification from various agencies declaring their plant-based shrimp both kosher and halal. The team at the Post business desk identified the religion ghost in that equation and produced this solid thesis statement:


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Ahmad Khan Rahami: The New York Times offers early clues to a life transformed

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While politicians keep arguing about what is and what is not a bomb and what is and what is not a “motive” for terrorism, most American journalists -- at least in the print media -- have settled into a somewhat predictable pattern for covering the basic facts of these kinds of events.

That was a compliment.

There was a time when reporters seemed so anxious to avoid the religion angles in these stories that they actually buried or ignored basic facts -- which almost certainly led to increased distrust among readers. We are talking about stories in which a a suspect’s name or family history was hidden deep in the text or reporting that ignored details provided by witnesses, such as whether attackers shouted religious references or asked victims if they were Muslims.

At this point -- perhaps after waves of street-level violence in Europe and elsewhere -- reporters have gone back to writing basic stories. That doesn’t mean that potential links to radicalized forms of Islam dominate the headlines and the tops of news reports. It does mean that essential facts are covered and, often, they are linked to human details that help them make sense.

Consider the New York Times second-day feature story about the man arrested -- after a gun battle with police -- following the disturbing series of attacks in and around New York City. Just look at the complex matrix of materials at the very top of this story.

He presided behind the counter of a storefront New Jersey fried chicken restaurant, making his home with his family in an apartment above it. To some of his friends, Ahmad Khan Rahami was known as Mad, an abridgment of his name rather than a suggestion of his manner, and they liked that he gave them free food when they were short on money.


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