CSENGELE, Hungary (AP) – In a small room with religious texts, a Jewish rabbi demonstrates how knives are sharpened and inspected before being used to cut the throats, geese and other poultry at a kosher slaughterhouse in Hungary .
A Shochet, someone trained and certified to slaughter animals according to Jewish tradition, makes a knife on increasingly fine stones before pulling the blade over a fingernail to feel if there are imperfections in the steel that are slippery. , can impede clean cutting and cause unnecessary pain.
“One of the most important things in kosher is that the animal does not suffer,” said Rabbi Jacob Werchow, who oversees production at Quality Poultry, a 3 1/2-year-old slaughterhouse that produces nearly 40% of Europe’s kosher poultry liver. market and a large portion of the foie gras sold in Israel.
The methods used at the plant in the village of Csengele are based on ancient Judaic principles that command the humane treatment of living things. They are also at the center of a debate on how to balance animal rights and religious rights, as parts of Europe restrict or effectively ban the ritual slaughter practices of Jews and Muslims.
Companies such as Quality Poultry have found new export markets since the highest court in the European Union last month upheld a law in the Flemish region of Belgium that slaughtered animals without first numbing them into unconsciousness. But the ruling of the European Court of Justice also provoked fears of a final EU-wide ban on ritual slaughter, and evoked memories of periods when Jews in Europe faced cruel persecution.
“This decision not only affects the Belgian Jewish community, it affects all of us,” 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 moral approval for it, it could start on a larger scale. If you lower this logic, the next step is that you can not sell meat like this in these countries either. ”
The EU has required animal anesthesia since 1979, but allows member states to make religion-based exceptions. 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 EU members, they have done away with religious exemptions, which means kosher and halal meat must be imported.
Animal rights groups say the throats of livestock and poultry while they are conscious are causing it to be cruel to animals. Stunning methods vary, but the procedure is usually performed by means of electric shock or a bolt gun to the animal’s skull.
“Reversible anesthesia is the absolute minimum we can do to protect animals,” said Reineke Hameleers, chief executive of the Brussels Eurogroup for Animals. “They must be made unconscious before they are killed.”
The situation is not so confusing for religious observers. According to Jewish law, injury or damage to animal tissues is prohibited before slaughter, and modern astonishing practices can, according to Koves, cause death or irreparable injuries that do not make meat and poultry kosher.
Although some Muslim religious authorities considered it spectacularly permissible, local Muslim groups argued that the beautiful demands in Flanders and Wallonia stemmed from the efforts of the Islamic right-wingers of Belgium to harass their communities.
Rabbis Koves and Werchow said they believe the kosher slaughter method, known as shechita, is no less human than the methods used in conventional meat production. In addition to the intensive process of sharpening and inspecting the knives, the shochet is trained to make the cut in a single smooth motion, separating the nerves from the animal and draining the blood from the brain within seconds.
“Whatever you think about … whether kosher slaughter is better for the animal than ordinary slaughter, you basically put animal rights above human rights,” Koves said. “If people are going to ban our rights to kosher food, it means that it restricts our human rights. And this, especially in a place like Europe, brings back many bad memories. ‘
Laws requiring the anesthesia of animals before slaughter appeared in some European countries as early as the late 19th century. Adolf Hitler commissioned the practice in 1933 just after he became Chancellor of Germany, one of the first laws enacted by the Nazis.
Jewish and Muslim groups are challenging the Flanders Act in the Belgian 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 advised the court to destroy the Flanders Act and argued that it violated the rights of certain religions to preserve their essential religious rituals. But the court disagrees, finding that the law “allows a fair balance to be struck between the importance attached to animal welfare and the freedom of Jewish and Muslim believers to manifest their religion.”
The Minister of Animal Welfare for the Brussels region in Belgium, where surprise is not mandatory, said the ruling would breathe new life into the obligatory astonishing debate there. The Brussels chapter of the New Flemish Alliance, a center-right party whose members took the lead for the law in Flanders, said it would now submit a proposal for a decree to slaughter without surprise in the capital to prohibit.
The Hungarian government helped finance the slaughterhouse in Csengele, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban joined the Jewish groups in condemning the court ruling as an attack on religious freedom. In a January letter to the US Jewish Agency for Israel, Orban wrote that his government ‘will spare no effort to raise our voice against (the decision) in every possible international forum.
Koves and other chief rabbis in Europe are investigating ways to appeal against the EU court’s ruling.