Denmark made a potentially monumental change in how it treats animals this week when they passed a new law banning all kosher and halal animal slaughter practices.
The law was announced last week and took effect on Feb. 17, which immediately stirred up some opposition from religious groups, according to The Guardian. “Animal welfare takes precedence over religion,” said Danish Agriculture and Food Minister Dan Jørgensen, agreeing with me that times have changed and selfish slaughter practices should too.
Traditional kosher slaughter, or shechita, is done by a person called a shochet who has received a special education in slaughtering practice. They kill the animal with a quick, deep slitting of the throat with a sharp knife. Ideally, the animal becomes unconscious so as to avoid unnecessary suffering, according to PETA.
The Independent reported that Jewish leaders called the new law anti-Semitic. The non-profit group Danish Halal has called it “a clear interference in religious freedom” and has started a petition against the ban. All of this religious uproar is happening despite the fact that a true shechita hasn’t occurred in Denmark in at least a decade, reported The Jewish Daily Forward, and that “the Danish Jewish community, which numbers about 6,000, imports its kosher meat.”
Slaughterhouses usually stun animals with a bolt gun before killing them, reported The Huffington Post, but to be considered kosher under Jewish law, or halal under Islamic law, the animal must be conscious when they are killed. The process is supposed to occur with a sharp knife, rendering the animal unconscious quickly, which is important to aid in the complete draining of blood from the body, a necessary requirement of kosher foods.
According to The Huffington Post, the petition by the Danish Halal said, “[Halal slaughter] is a procedure that is done under the guise of animal welfare, despite the fact that many scientific studies show that the animal suffers less [via a] properly performed slaughter than when it gets a blow to the head with a nail gun.”
The Jewish Daily Forward reported that in 1998, Danish Jews agreed to accept meat labeled kosher that was from animals killed by a non-invasive bolt gun to the head in order to render them unconscious before being slaughtered. This is technically not in accordance with traditional kosher slaughter because the animal is not conscious when they die but was accepted because the brain was not penetrated by the bolt gun, allowing all bodily organs to remain pure. This new slaughter law prevents something that Danish Jews have agreed willingly not to do anyway, but of course, that does not stop people from causing an uproar and accusing Denmark of anti-Semitism.
Animals should not be ours to abuse at will. I don’t know at what point in history it became a characteristic of human nature to be completely accepting of the “beating, boiling, and dismembering [of] animals alive that is common-place in today’s slaughter houses,” according to animal-rights-action.com, but it needs to stop. Passing this law is a step in the right direction, but every country needs to make changes to at least treat the animals they are responsible for kindly, if not just decently.
PETA commented to The Huffington Post about the law and said, “The rest of the world shouldn’t feel superior, though: on factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy and windowless sheds, wire cages, crates and other confinement systems. The only diet that is open to all religions and truly respects animal rights is a vegan one.”
Everything is relative. Everything can be seen from different perspectives and can be justified or unjustified based upon beliefs and opinions. But the fact that we breed, raise and torture animals for the entirety of their short life spans just to slaughter them later, no matter how “humanely” or “inhumanely,” is incomprehensible to me.
Hunting something in nature, killing it with your bare hands and using it to feed your family is one thing; to mass breed and store animals in facilities that see them as literal “pieces of meat,” as opposed to conscious beings deserving of a life other than misery and to become our dinner, is another matter. I agree with what PETA said to The Huffington Post in that “no religion needs to slaughter animals for food and banning certain slaughter methods in which cows and other animals have their throats slit while still sensate is a step in the right direction.” Denmark is setting a good example for other countries in facing the reality that animals are not ours to condemn to miserable lives and torturous deaths just for the sake of a meal.
Avery Twible can be reached at avery.twible@spartans.ut.edu