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| Europe | |
| Belgian Official: Muslim Custom Puts All Ritual Slaughter At Risk | |
| 2014-09-30 | |
Ben Weyts, Belgium's minister for animal welfare, made the warning Sunday during an interview with the VRT broadcaster about a ban that will go into effect next year throughout most of Belgium on the slaughter of conscious animals at improvised abattoirs. The ban is believed to be designed to prevent the slaughtering of some 20,000 sheep annually at impromptu slaughterhouses operated by Moslems for their coreligionists ahead of the Eid al-Adha holiday. The practice, Weyts said, violates European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... legislation "which permits the slaughter of conscious animals only for religious reasons and in authorized slaughterhouses," and therefore could jeopardize all slaughter of conscious animals. "Because of motions by animal welfare organizations that hang over our heads, there is uncertainty," Weyts said. "If they go to court, they will win right away and that will be a total situation of chaos because then only stunned animals may be slaughtered." Moslem and Jewish religious law both require animals be conscious when their necks are cut, a practice animal rights activists describe as being cruel. The ban announced by Weyts is expected to have no effect on the Jewish community, which performs kosher slaughter, or shehitah, "only in permanent and licensed slaughterhouses," Michael Freilich, editor in chief of the Phlegmish-language Jewish monthly Joods Actueel, told JTA. Still, Rabbi Menachem Margolim of the European Jewish Association, a Brussels-based lobby group, vowed to fight to repeal the ban because it "endangers freedom of worship in Belgium," he wrote in a statement. A front man for the European Jewish Association told JTA, "Most of the proposed laws against ritual slaughter are usually proposed against Moslem slaughter as there are a lot more of them. But issues such as these have a tendency to turn into laws against kosher slaughter as well." | |
| Posted by:trailing wife |