CSENGELE, Hungary (AP) – In a small room lined with religious texts, a Jewish rabbi demonstrates how knives are sharpened and inspected before being used to cut the necks of chickens, geese and other birds at a slaughterhouse kosher from Hungary.
A shochet, someone trained and certified for slaughtering animals according to Jewish tradition, throws a knife at increasingly fine stones before pulling the blade over a nail to feel any imperfections in the steel that could inhibit a smooth, clean cut, and can cause unnecessary pain.
“One of the most important things about kosher is that the animal doesn’t suffer,” said Rabbi Jacob Werchow, who oversees production at Quality Poultry, a 3-and-a-half-year-old slaughterhouse that supplies nearly 40 percent of Europe’s kosher birds. market and much of the foie gras sold in Israel.
The methods used at the installation in the village of Csengele are based on ancient Jewish principles that command the human treatment of living creatures. They are also at the center of a debate on how to balance animal rights and religious rights, as parts of Europe are effectively restricting or banning the ritual slaughter of Jews and Muslims.
Companies such as Quality Poultry have found new export markets since the European Union’s highest court last month upheld a law in the Belgian region of Flanders that banned the slaughter of animals without first being unconscious. But the ruling of the European Court of Justice has also raised concerns about possible EU-wide bans on ritual sacrifice and evoked memories of times when European Jews faced brutal persecution.
“This decision does not only affect the Belgian Jewish community, but affects us all,” said Rabbi Slomo Koves of the Association of Hungarian Jewish Communities, which owns the Csengele slaughterhouse. “If this is the case in Belgium and the court has given him moral approval, he could start a trial on a larger scale. If you go down this logic, the next step is that you also can’t help but sell meat like this in these countries. ”
The EU has called for the pre-stunning of animals since 1979, but allows Member States to make exceptions based on religion. Most do, but together with Flanders and the Walloon region of Belgium, Slovenia, Denmark and Sweden, as well as Switzerland, Iceland and Norway, which are not members of the EU, they have abolished religious exemptions, which means that they must be imported. kosher and halal meat.
Animal rights groups say cutting the necks of poultry and poultry while they are conscious causes suffering that amounts to animal cruelty. The amazing methods vary, but the procedure is most often done by electric shock or with a screw gun to the animal’s skull.
“Reversible astonishment is the least we can do to protect animals,” said Reineke Hameleers, CEO of the Eurogroup for Animals in Brussels. “They should be unconscious before they are killed.”
The situation is not so simple for religious observers. Jewish law prohibits the injury or damage to animal tissues before slaughter, and modern stunning practices can cause death or irreparable injury that would make meat and poultry inappropriate, according to Koves.
Although some Muslim religious authorities consider it possible to stun before slaughter, local Muslim groups have argued that the astonishing demands of Flanders and Wallonia have resulted from the efforts of the Belgian Islamophobic far right to harass their communities.
Rabbis Koves and Werchow said they believe the kosher slaughter method, known as shechita, is no less humane than the methods used in conventional meat production. In addition to the intense process of sharpening and inspecting the knives, the shochet is trained to make the cut in a single smooth motion, cutting the animal’s nerves and draining blood from the brain in seconds.
“Whatever you think about … if kosher slaughter is better for the animal than ordinary slaughter, in essence, put animal rights before human rights,” Koves said. “If people ban our rights to kosher food, it means it limits our human rights. And this, especially in a place like Europe, brings back very bad memories. ”
Laws requiring the stunning of animals before slaughter have appeared in some European countries since the end of the 19th century. Adolf Hitler mandated the practice in 1933 immediately after he became chancellor of Germany, one of the first laws imposed by the Nazis.
Jewish and Muslim groups have challenged Flanders’ law in Belgium’s Constitutional Court, which has referred it to the European Court of Justice for a ruling on its compatibility with EU law.
The Advocate General of the Court of Justice advised the court to repeal the law of Flanders, arguing that it violates the rights of certain faiths to preserve their essential religious rites. However, the court did not agree, considering that the law “allows a fair balance between the importance given to animal welfare and the freedom of Jewish and Muslim believers to manifest their religion.”
The Minister for Animal Welfare in the Brussels region of Belgium, where stunning is not mandatory, said the ruling would give new life to the mandatory stunning debate there. The Brussels chapter of the New Flemish Alliance, a center-right party whose members have led the law under pressure in Flanders, said it would now submit a proposed ordinance banning slaughter without astonishment in the capital region.
The Hungarian government helped fund the Csengele slaughterhouse, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban joined Jewish groups in condemning the court’s decision as an attack on religious freedom. In a January letter to the US Jewish Agency for Israel in Israel, Orban wrote that his government “will make no effort to raise its voice against (the decision) in every possible international forum.”
Koves and other chief rabbis in Europe are looking for ways to challenge the EU court’s decision.