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Denmark bans kosher and halal slaughter as minister says ‘animal rights come before religion’

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Denmark’s government has brought in a ban on the religious slaughter of animals for the production of halal and kosher meat, after years of campaigning from welfare activists.

The change to the law, announced last week and effective as of yesterday, has been called “anti-Semitism” by Jewish leaders and “a clear interference in religious freedom” by the non-profit group Danish Halal.

European regulations require animals to be stunned before they are slaughtered, but grants exemptions on religious grounds. For meat to be considered kosher under Jewish law or halal under Islamic law, the animal must be conscious when killed.

Yet defending his government’s decision to remove this exemption, the minister for agriculture and food Dan Jørgensen told Denmark’s TV2 that “animal rights come before religion”.

Commenting on the change, Israel’s deputy minister of religious services Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan told the Jewish Daily Forward: “European anti-Semitism is showing its true colours across Europe, and is even intensifying in the government institutions.”

Al Jazeera quoted the monitoring group Danish Halal, which launched a petition against the ban, as saying it was “a clear interference in religious freedom limiting the rights of Muslims and Jews to practice their religion in Denmark”.

Marius the giraffe, who was shot dead and autopsied in the presence of visitors to the gardens at Copenhagen zoo Marius the giraffe, who was shot dead and autopsied in the presence of visitors to the gardens at Copenhagen zoo The ban has divided opinions in the country, particularly after it recently made headlines for animal welfare policy after Copenhagen Zoo slaughtered the “surplus” young male giraffe Marius.

On Twitter, David Krikler (@davekriks) wrote: “In Denmark butchering a healthy giraffe in front of kids is cool but a kosher/halal chicken is illegal.”

Byakuya Ali-Hassan (@SirOthello) said it was “disgusting” that “the same country that slaughtered a giraffe in public to be fed to lions… is banning halal meat because of the procedures”.

Mogens Larsen (@Moq72), from Aalborg in Denmark, tweeted: “Denmark bans the religious slaughter of animals. Not even zoo lions are allowed a taste of halal giraffe.”

Last year politicians in Britain said they would not be outlawing religious slaughter despite “strong pressure” from the RSPCA, the National Secular Society and other activists.

Full article here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/denmark-bans-halal-and-kosher-slaughter-as-minister-says-animal-rights-come-before-religion-9135580.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/denmark-bans-halal-and-kosher-slaughter-as-minister-says-animal-rights-come-before-religion-9135580.html)

Anything that pisses off the religious, I am all for.

If your religion prefers to maximize the suffering of animals, fuck your religion.

This is where the liberal line ends to be cut short. I eat meat yes, but I would never condone the suffering of animals. And that's what halal and kosher is, nothing less.
Fuck the insanity of all faiths.

Its not so much anti-Semitism (These guys are really acting like insufferable childish cunts in making such an outrageous accusation btw)

-As it is not wanting animals to suffer horrible deaths.

The... irony, I guess... is that halal (and I would assume kosher) food is suppose to be conducted in a way to reduce the suffering of animals as much as humanly possible (dhabīḥah). It was, in it's time, the most humane way to kill the animal...

But the reason was lost somewhere down the line, and now it is done for tradition rather than evolving with the times to maintain it's original goal. I would be all for halal slaughtering if it maintained it's belief that the animal should suffer the absolute bare minimum, but that part got lost in keeping the tradition of doing it the way it has been done for hundreds of years (as is the case with kosher food).

So they want the goat or whatever animal to feel the full impact of being gutted  and feeling as much pain as possible?  Why not just have it run 10 miles chased by barking dogs till it passes out from exhaustion and call it a day?  I'm fairly certain that the same people wouldn't demand to be kept awake and alert if the doctor was performing open heart surgery on them. Perhaps atheists should begin demanding that it's our tradition that all others undergo surgery without anesthesia of any kind.

I did a little more research, and Islam seems to be rather hazy on stunning the animal prior to slaughtering it. In the U.K. at least, almost 90% of animals are stunned before their throats are cut and the blood is drained from their bodies.

Kosher laws are however very clear. The animal has to be alert and conscious before its throat is cut.

Commercial meat practices in general aren't very kind, so for me, it's not about them needing to be conscious or whatever. Animals slaughtered according to halal or kosher laws really don't seem to have it worse than animals slaughtered in secular factories and in fact might have it even better. In the states at least, poultry is hung upside down, stunned, bled and then boiled to remove their feathers. Some of them are still alive when they get to that last step.

I don't eat commercial meat and it's been years since I've eaten meat that I hunted or fished so I consider myself vegetarian. So I don't know which I find worse: that religious texts require an animal to be fully conscious when they are killed or that secular commercial businesses aren't bound by such shittiness but go a step further to save a buck.

Quote from: TomFoolery on July 26, 2015, 09:06:01 PM
I did a little more research, and Islam seems to be rather hazy on stunning the animal prior to slaughtering it. In the U.K. at least, almost 90% of animals are stunned before their throats are cut and the blood is drained from their bodies.

Kosher laws are however very clear. The animal has to be alert and conscious before its throat is cut.

Commercial meat practices in general aren't very kind, so for me, it's not about them needing to be conscious or whatever. Animals slaughtered according to halal or kosher laws really don't seem to have it worse than animals slaughtered in secular factories and in fact might have it even better. In the states at least, poultry is hung upside down, stunned, bled and then boiled to remove their feathers. Some of them are still alive when they get to that last step.

I don't eat commercial meat and it's been years since I've eaten meat that I hunted or fished so I consider myself vegetarian. So I don't know which I find worse: that religious texts require an animal to be fully conscious when they are killed or that secular commercial businesses aren't bound by such shittiness but go a step further to save a buck.

This. I think it's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction when you see halal or kosher and that it must be evil by nature and that what we "seculars" do is humane.

I was raised around livestock, and have seen how they are killed. It isn't pretty no matter who is doing it... and more often than not, it is almost exactly the same way. For so much halal food, it is no different than the secular practice other than they say "...by the grace of god".

Halal and kosher, to me, is an unbelievable non-issue compared to how the live stock are raised and the environmental impact of how we raise them. If Denmark really wants to make a difference they should look more at how the animal lives than how it dies... and then take a look at "secular" killing and see how humane it really is.

Quote from: TomFoolery on July 26, 2015, 09:06:01 PM
I did a little more research, and Islam seems to be rather hazy on stunning the animal prior to slaughtering it. In the U.K. at least, almost 90% of animals are stunned before their throats are cut and the blood is drained from their bodies.

Kosher and halal get an exemption on stunning in most places.

I don't think the Quran tells muslims how to slaughter their food,it's kind of vague on that.
www.quran.com/5/3 (http://www.quran.com/5/3)

Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on July 26, 2015, 08:49:56 PM
So they want the goat or whatever animal to feel the full impact of being gutted  and feeling as much pain as possible?  Why not just have it run 10 miles chased by barking dogs till it passes out from exhaustion and call it a day?  I'm fairly certain that the same people wouldn't demand to be kept awake and alert if the doctor was performing open heart surgery on them. Perhaps atheists should begin demanding that it's our tradition that all others undergo surgery without anesthesia of any kind.

They don't skin or gut the animal while it is still alive. They use a special, very large knife to sever the vessels in the throat while the animal is standing, and wait for it to exsanguinate before they do the rest of the butchering. The knife is very sharp to minimize suffering, but it's hard not to think about what it would be like to have your throat sliced so you bleed to death.

To those who dispute the ban based on the grounds that non-religious slaughtering standards are also inhumane:

Do you disagree that banning one inhumane method of slaughter is a step in the right direction, but standards of non-religious slaughter should also be improved?

If we want to improve universal standards but give certain groups special exceptions then universal standards are not being improved, only some standards are.

Quote from: SilentFutility on August 02, 2015, 04:03:36 AM
To those who dispute the ban based on the grounds that non-religious slaughtering standards are also inhumane:

Do you disagree that banning one inhumane method of slaughter is a step in the right direction, but standards of non-religious slaughter should also be improved?

If we want to improve universal standards but give certain groups special exceptions then universal standards are not being improved, only some standards are.

I certainly do not despise it, just annoyed that people would celebrate it as a matter of, "Hehe! Our dicks are bigger than yours, we win!". I do not know why this law was passed; it may be completely for animal rights and not to prove my culture is better than yours. But I doubt that, given the recent xenophobia that has started to pop up more and more in the world. Xenophobia with cause, certainly, but xenophobia all the same. And my gut tells me this was passed more by people who want to stick it to the other guy rather than who had any humane reasons on their mind.

If similar actions are being taken in the regular slaughter industry, then by all means this is a great move. But motive is important to me because it can have just as large of effect on the future as action. I can only speak for America when I say similar actions are not being taken, and people who think animals should be treated even remotely like a living being are looked at as being "different" and "weird".

A culture war is like any other war; the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on science... no one wins in the long run.

Shiranu is probably right. After last election a more right-wing government has come in place of the previous left-wing one. This comes as a result of the "pure" Danes want tighter restriction on immigration and the like.

If they start to throw criminal 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants out of Denmark, then I think we're headed in the wrong direction (there has been talk about throwing people out on judicial grounds to their native country for 1st generation immigrants).

Saw this on Voat a week ago. The article is a year old and somewhat misleading. According to a few Muslims commenting in the thread, this doesn't actually affect halal slaughter, only kosher.

Ulterior motives or not, having laws which ensure animals are killed humanely, but giving people exceptions to kill animals without meeting humane criteria and stunning them just because of their beliefs is silly.

Regardless of what I believe I'm still held accountable to all the laws of my home country. I can't have beliefs that differ from legislation and simply be allowed to do as I please.

Oh, this story just get's better and better...

Number of Kosher slaughterhouses in Denmark = 0.
Number of Halal slaughterhouses in Demark = 0.
Years since killing without pre-stunning has been allowed, religious or not = 10.

So, tell me again how many animals this is helping? You want to help animals? Worry about how they are raised, not how they spend their last few minutes. A great quote from one article on the subject... even if it's from the guardian (note; not where I found the numbers above, I have spent the last 5 or 6 minutes trying to find any evidence of religious slaughter houses in Denmark and turned up blank every time).

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2014/feb/20/denmark-halal-kosha-slaughter-hypocrisy-animal-welfare

QuoteIt seems to me obvious that the slaughter of animals at the end of their lives is of far less ethical importance than the way they are treated beforehand. The cruelties of factory farming extend over an animal's whole lifetime whereas the cruelty of ritual slaughter lasts minutes at most. To complain about the halal slaughter of battery chickens or factory farmed veal is a truly monstrous absurdity.

In a Danish context this is particularly obvious. The pig farming industry there, whose products are devoured by almost everyone in Europe who isn't an observant Jew of Muslim, is a monstrous engine of quotidian suffering, despite the pre-slaughter stunning. The new agriculture minister, Dan Jørgensen, has pointed out that 25,000 piglets a day die in Danish factory farms â€" they never even make it to the slaughterhouse; that half of the sows have open sores and 95% have their tails docked, a cruel (and under EU regulations, illegal) practice that is needed to stop them chewing and biting one another's tails in their concrete sheds.

So please, don't act like this is to protect the animals. It's not. It's cultural dick waving just to piss off the other guy. It is an non-issue and has been one for over 10 years. This law literally fixed NOTHING just to spit in the face of the other guy.

And halal is not some barbaric practice, nor does it prohibit pre-stunning... 80 to 90% of British halal meat is pre-stunned. Only kosher prohibits the stunning of the animal.

Note; This is also a country that just recently shot, killed and dissected a giraffe in front of vistors because it was "surplus".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26734377

But yes, animal rights... they are clearly all about that.

I still stand by my point that it is not okay to have a special exception to a law because you are religious.

However, with regards to everything else surrounding this specific situation, it would seem that you are correct.

Quote from: SilentFutility on August 04, 2015, 04:44:02 PM
I still stand by my point that it is not okay to have a special exception to a law because you are religious.

But is having an exception to the law permissible if the exception holds them to standards generally higher than the law?

This is not about animal rights. This is a declaration that NO religious beliefs what's so ever is above some regulations needed to maintain civilisation. No special treatment. Period.

Also, it's highly likely to cut down migration. Perfectly understandable. Please do not fuck up the civilastion zones people managed to create because of your religion. You want to live there, fine. ADAPT!

It really doesn't matter that Denmark has no halal and kosher slaughter houses. Because this is the main reason why Denmark is able to do such a thing in the first place. 'Christian' companies make a huge amount of money from kosher and halal. So they really don't care about 'religous freedom' or animal rights either. It's fucking MONEY.

Heads up, none of the countries with a considerable amount of Jewish or Islamic communites will do this, because it would cause a lot of trouble and also illegal slaughter houses would quadruple over a night. There would be social disorder...etc. But of course the propaganda will always be "We respect religious beliefs". My ass. If this wasn't a matter of business, they would ban it decades ago.

I get Shiranu's point. Yes, I am sure they liked that it pissed off the religous groups. So did I. Because these people need to adapt or need to be forced to adapt. They can pray and tell their gods that 'evil infidels' on earth do not let them have their eid the way he wanted.

I think TomFoolery expressed it very good. If your religion is supporting inflicting pain on animals which we ALREADY take their lives to feed ourselves, FUCK your religion. And if you are unwilling to modify that someone hopefully will. 

I fully support it. Congrats Denmark. :clap:


Now Denmark, BAN male circumcision!