Bans on ritual slaughter
Encyclopedia
The legal aspects of ritual slaughter include the regulation of slaughterhouse
s, butcher
s, and religious personnel involved with traditional shechita
(Jewish) and dhabiĥa
(Islamic). Regulations also may extend to butchery products
sold in accordance with kashrut
and halal
religious law. Governments regulate ritual slaughter, primarily through legislation
and administrative law
. In addition, compliance with oversight of ritual slaughter is monitored by governmental agencies and, on occasion, contested in litigation.
In the United States, for example, courts have ruled that kosher butchers may be excluded from collective bargaining units, a Jewish beit din (court) may forbid trade with disapproved butchers, retail sellers implicitly stipulate their compliance with rabbinic courts, a state law (NY) may incorporate a rabbinical ruling on kosher labeling, and kashrut symbols may be subject to trade infringement laws.
Due to differences between ritual and mainstream slaughtering practices, kosher slaughter may be exempted from animal welfare laws. For instance, in the United States, the Humane Slaughter Act
(7 U.S.C. section 1901) exempts ritual slaughter and this exemption has been upheld as constitutional.
The kosher food industry has challenged regulations as an infringement on religious freedom.
Secular governments also have sought to restrict ritual slaughter not intended for food consumption. In the U.S., the most prominent such case is Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah
. In this case, the Supreme Court of the United States
ruled unconstitutional a local Florida ban on Santería
ritual animal sacrifice
.
After conquering Bago in 1559, King Bayinnaung
prohibited the practice of halal
, specifically, killing food animals in the name of a god. The halal was also forbidden by King Alaungpaya
in the 18th century.
According to the White History of the Tenfold Virtuous Dharma (Arban Buyantu Nom-un Caġan Teüke), Altan Khan
ordered the religious code Arban Buyantu Nom-un Cagaja prohibited human and animal sacrifice.
Norway banned religious slaughter without pre stunning in 1930. Germany banned shechita three months after Hitler came to power in 1933, Sweden banned it in 1937 and a ban was enforced in Poland with the Nazi invasion in 1939 (see section below on Nazi Germany).
Bans introduced by the German Third Reich and by Mussolini were removed by Allied Command when the Allies liberated Europe.
Opponents of ritual slaughter bans argue that the practice is humane, that no scientific evidence exists to prove that ritual slaughter causes more suffering to animals than other methods. Ritual slaughter is one of two methods of slaughter defined as humane by the federal Humane Slaughter Act in the United States.
The issue is complicated by allegations of antisemitism and xenophobia
. Lastly, recent debate in Switzerland has been contentious, in part, because of comparisons by a prominent activist (convicted several times of hate crimes against Jews) between kosher slaughter and the methods used by Nazis in concentration camps. (The statement: "Every day is Treblinka for the animals" is by Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer
.)
The Nazi propaganda film Der ewige Jude
(The Eternal Jew), designed to sow hatred for Jews, contains one scene that utterly distorts the way animals are killed in accordance with Jewish law, depicting Jews as rejoicing in the suffering of animals.
directive, "European Convention for the Protection of Animals for Slaughter", generally requires stunning before slaughter, but allows member states to allow exemptions for religious slaughter: "Each Contracting Party may authorize derogations from the provisions concerning prior stunning in the following cases: – slaughtering in accordance with religious rituals ...". The only member state of the European Union currently banning ritual slaughter without prior stunning of the animal is Sweden. Switzerland, Norway and Iceland (not EU members) are the only other countries to ban slaughter without prior stunning of the animal in Europe.
Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights
provides for a right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion which includes the freedom to manifest a religion or belief in, inter alia, practice and observance, subject only to such restrictions as are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society."
In May 2009 the European Parliament voted in favour of allowing ritual slaughter in member states.
interpreted Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights
in a case involving a lawsuit by Glatt kosher slaughterers against a French law recognizing a non-Glatt association (the ACIP) as having the exclusive right to conduct Jewish ritual slaughter in France.
The Court stated that ritual slaughter is a practice covered by the Article 9's guarantee of the right to manifest religious observance:
The Court then clarified the scope of Article 9, holding that it applies only to restrictions which would prevent consumers from being able to obtain ritually slaughtered meat:
Thus, under the Court of Human Rights' interpretation (not unanimous) of the European Convention on Human Rights in the Cha'are Shalom case, restrictions on ritual slaughter are permissible, but only if they do not prevent religious adherents from obtaining religiously slaughtered meat.
provides a broader guarantee of human rights in the area of religious freedom than the European Convention on Human Rights. In an appeal by a Turkish citizen who practiced Islamic ritual slaughter, the German court struck down Germany's former ban on ritual slaughter, holding that the German Basic Law's guarantee of religious freedom prohibited the German government from applying a law requiring stunning prior to slaughter to observant Muslims who practice ritual slaughter for religious reasons, and that the Basic Law's guarantee of religious freedom applies to slaughterers as well as consumers of meat.
The German court held that under Article 2.1 of the German Basic Law, religious slaughterers have a distinct fundamental right to practice a religiously-recognized vocation. It also explained that merely permitting importation of ritually slaughtered meat is inadequate to protect the religious rights of individuals under Articles 4.1 and 4.2 of the German Basic Law (Constitution) because personal contact is important to ensuring compliance with religious requirements. It held that an exemption from laws that conflicted with this was therefore mandated:
. The Netherlands, like Switzerland, has in the past considered extending the ban in order to prohibit importing kosher products. Rabbi Melchior, who was serving as Israeli deputy foreign minister at the time of the Dutch debate, said "they simply don't want foreigners and they don't want Jews." In February 2011, a majority in parliament took position against a proposed ban on ritual slaughter without stunning, citing a Council of State advice that deems such a ban in violation of freedom of religion. However, in June 2011 the lower house of parliament passed a law, proposed by the Party for the Animals
, banning ritual slaughter without stunning. The law provides for a temporary (for a maximum of five years) exemption from the ban if an applicant can show scientific evidence, subject to specific conditions, that the proposed method of unstunned slaughter does not cause the animal more distress than regular slaughter does. The law still has to be passed by the upper house of parliament. The earliest possibility for this to happen is autumn 2011.
Prior to the rise of National Socialism in Germany, bans only existed in Switzerland, Norway and Saxony. When Hitler came to power, the German National Socialist government introduced a ban in the whole of Germany in 1933, and in Poland when it invaded in 1939. Bans were introduced in all the countries which the Nazis occupied, as well as in the countries of the Axis allies, Italy and Hungary. These were removed by order of the Allied Military authorities by a special order, and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms included sections on Religious Freedom that in the preliminary discussions, referred specifically to religious ritual slaughter bans.pages 9–10 "Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland as well as six Austrian provinces allow no exemption to pre-mortem stunning of the animal. Conversely, this exemption is granted in France, UK, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. Conditions for exemption are not always the same in all countries. For instance, in Spain exemptions only apply to sheep and goats but not to cattle."
page 14 "Eventually, in 2002, the German constitutional court granted to a Muslim butcher the right to slaughter without stunning similarly to Jewish butchers"
The Netherlands is one of the countries that introduced legislative protection for shehitah.
Complete information up to 1946 on every ban introduced in every country in Europe in the original languages and in English translation is to be found in Religious Freedom: The Right to Practice Shehitah Munk, Berman together with references to the original debates and an analysis that claims that up until the rise of Hitler in 1933, the international campaign to introduce ritual slaughter/ shehitah bans had failed because the vast majority of countries where legislation had been proposed rejected the legislation realising the involvement of anti-Semites in the campaign and enacted legislation to protect Jewish and Muslim slaughter. The League of Nations supported the Jewish Community of Upper Silesia against Hitler in rejecting the attempts by German officials to confiscate shehitah knives and ban Jewish slaughter.
The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms has sections on Religious Freedom. The preparatory discussions for these dealt specifically with bans imposed by Hitler on Jewish and Muslim religious slaughter, and those countries that are signatories to the Convention and have bans today are not abiding by the convention.
In the 1890s, protests were raised in the Norwegian press against the practice of shechita. The Jewish community responded to these objections by assuring the public that the method was in fact humane. Efforts to ban shechita put sincere humane society activists in league with antisemitic
individuals. In particular, Jonas Søhr used the cause as a means to attack not just the slaughter methods of the small Jewish community in Norway, but also the community itself. Those opposing the ban included Fridtjof Nansen
, but the division on the issue crossed party lines in all mainstream parties, except the Farmer's Party, which was principled in its opposition to schechita.
The Food Health regulations were controversial, especially the stunning requirement, as they would lead to a fundamental change in the meat producing market. A committee was commissioned on February 11, 1927 that consulted numerous experts and visited a slaughterhouse in Copenhagen. Its majority favored the changes and found support in the Department of Agriculture and the parliamentary agriculture committee. Those who opposed a ban spoke of religious tolerance, and also found that schechita was no more inhumane than other slaughter methods. C J Hambro was one of those most appalled by the antisemitic invective, noting that "where animal rights are protected to an exaggerated extent, it usually is done with the help of human sacrifice"
The former chief rabbi of Norway, Michael Melchior
, argues that antisemitism is one motive for the bans "I won't say this is the only motivation, but it's certainly no coincidence that one of the first things Nazi Germany forbade was kosher slaughter. I also know that during the original debate on this issue in Norway, where shechitah has been banned since 1930, one of the parliamentarians said straight out, 'If they don't like it, let them go live somewhere else.'"
"In Switzerland, a ban on kosher slaughter has been enforced since 1897, when the people supported this measure through a referendum with clear anti-Semitic undertones. At the time, Jews had recently been granted full civil rights and some Swiss citizens feared an invasion of Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe, who they considered to be unassimilable, foreign and unreliable. By banning the performance of a core Jewish ritual, the Swiss people found a disguised way to limit the immigration of Jews into Switzerland."
According to the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour "Ritual slaughter (the bleeding to death of animals that have not first been stunned) was made illegal in the country in 1893; however, a 1978 Law on the Protection of Animals explicitly allows for the importation of kosher and halal meat. Imported from France and Germany, this meat is available in the country at comparable prices. In 2003, a popular initiative to protect animal rights and prohibit the import of meat from animals bled without stunning was filed; in December 2005, however, the sponsors withdrew their initiative before it had been submitted to a national vote after Parliament adopted a revision of the Law on the Protection of Animals."
There was a backlash against a proposal to lift the ban in 2002.
"In 2002, when the Swiss government attempted to lift the century-old ban, animal rights activists, political groups (on the left and the right), and unaffiliated citizens expressed strong opposition. They called shechita practice a "barbaric" and "sanguinary", an "archaic tradition from the time of the ghettos", and asked Jews to either become vegetarian or leave the country."
, has supported calls to ban the import of kosher and halal meat.
"A recent survey showed more than three-quarters of the population said they would like to see their government ban even the import of kosher meat. Erwin Kessler, an animal rights activist, has been campaigning vigorously for this. He's 40,000 short of the 100,000 signatures needed to trigger a referendum to completely ban kosher and halal meat entering Switzerland. Kessler has inflamed the controversy by publicly comparing kosher slaughter to the methods used by Nazis in concentration camps, but denies that his motives are, in fact, anti-semitic."
"Should a proposed ban on the import of kosher meat be accepted by the Swiss people in 2006, it will effectively force Jews who observe kashrut to abstain from the consumption of meat. Muslims will also be affected by this move."
The Humane Slaughter Act
defines ritual slaughter as one of two humane methods of slaughter.
Since 1958 the United States has prohibited the shackling and hoisting of cattle without stunning them first.
In Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah
508 U.S. 520 (1993), the United States Supreme Court struck down a ban imposed by the City of Hialeah, Florida
, on Santería
religious animal sacrifices practiced by the Church as contravening the religious freedoms guaranteed by the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution of the United States. While the City of Hialeah claimed that its ban on ritual slaughter "not for the primary purpose of food consumption" was motivated by concerns for animal welfare and public health, the Supreme Court held that ample evidence showed that it was in fact motivated by animosity to the Santería religion and a desire to suppress it:
The Court also found that the city's proffered reasons for its ban simply did not explain or justify it.
The United States Supreme Court held that animal sacrifice and ritual slaughter were practices protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty and that government could not enact targeted legislation suppressing religious practices under a guise of protecting animal welfare or promoting public health.
Temple Grandin
, who is both an animal welfare activist and the leading American designer of commercial slaughterhouses, has outlined techniques for humane ritual slaughter. She considers shackling and hoisting of animals for slaughter to be inhumane, and has developed alternative approaches usable in production plants. Grandin has coordinated this with the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
of the Conservative movement in the United States, and in 2000 the Committee voted to accept her approach, ruling that "Now that kosher, humane slaughter using upright pens is both possible and widespread, we find shackling and hoisting to be a violation of Jewish laws forbidding cruelty to animals and requiring that we avoid unnecessary dangers to human life. As the CJLS, then, we rule that shackling and hoisting should be stopped."
In an investigation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
, undercover video was obtained of kosher slaughtering practices at a major kosher slaughterhouse run by Agriprocessors
in Postville, Iowa
. The methods used there involved clamping the animals into a box which is then inverted for slaughter, followed by partial dismemberment of the animal before it was dead. Those methods have been condemned as unnecessarily cruel by PETA and others, including Grandin and the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, but are endorsed by the Orthodox Union
, which supervises the slaughterhouse. An investigation by the USDA
resulted in some minor operational changes. A lawsuit under Iowa law is pending. Grandin's comment was "I thought it was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. I couldn't believe it. I've been in at least 30 other kosher slaughter plants, and I had never ever seen that kind of procedure done before. ...
I've seen kosher slaughter really done right, so the problem here is not kosher slaughter. The problem here is a plant that is doing everything wrong they can do wrong". In 2006 the Orthodox Union, Temple Grandin and Agriprocessors had reportedly resolved their problems. In 2008, though, Grandin reported that Agriprocessors had again become "sloppy" in their slaughter operation and was "in the bottom 10%" of slaughterhouses.
Slaughterhouse
A slaughterhouse or abattoir is a facility where animals are killed for consumption as food products.Approximately 45-50% of the animal can be turned into edible products...
s, butcher
Butcher
A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments...
s, and religious personnel involved with traditional shechita
Shechita
Shechita is the ritual slaughter of mammals and birds according to Jewish dietary laws...
(Jewish) and dhabiĥa
Dhabiha
is, in Islamic law, the prescribed method of ritual slaughter of all animals excluding camels, locusts, fish and most sea-life. This method of slaughtering animals consists of a swift, deep incision with a sharp knife on the neck, cutting the jugular veins and carotid arteries of both sides but...
(Islamic). Regulations also may extend to butchery products
Meat
Meat is animal flesh that is used as food. Most often, this means the skeletal muscle and associated fat and other tissues, but it may also describe other edible tissues such as organs and offal...
sold in accordance with kashrut
Kashrut
Kashrut is the set of Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with halakha is termed kosher in English, from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term kashér , meaning "fit" Kashrut (also kashruth or kashrus) is the set of Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with halakha (Jewish law) is termed...
and halal
Halal
Halal is a term designating any object or an action which is permissible to use or engage in, according to Islamic law. The term is used to designate food seen as permissible according to Islamic law...
religious law. Governments regulate ritual slaughter, primarily through legislation
Legislation
Legislation is law which has been promulgated by a legislature or other governing body, or the process of making it...
and administrative law
Administrative law
Administrative law is the body of law that governs the activities of administrative agencies of government. Government agency action can include rulemaking, adjudication, or the enforcement of a specific regulatory agenda. Administrative law is considered a branch of public law...
. In addition, compliance with oversight of ritual slaughter is monitored by governmental agencies and, on occasion, contested in litigation.
Scope of regulations
In Western countries, law reaches into every stage of ritual slaughter, from the slaughtering of livestock to the sale of kosher or halal meat.In the United States, for example, courts have ruled that kosher butchers may be excluded from collective bargaining units, a Jewish beit din (court) may forbid trade with disapproved butchers, retail sellers implicitly stipulate their compliance with rabbinic courts, a state law (NY) may incorporate a rabbinical ruling on kosher labeling, and kashrut symbols may be subject to trade infringement laws.
Due to differences between ritual and mainstream slaughtering practices, kosher slaughter may be exempted from animal welfare laws. For instance, in the United States, the Humane Slaughter Act
Humane Slaughter Act
The Humane Slaughter Act, or the Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act, is a United States federal law designed to protect livestock during slaughter. It was passed in 1958...
(7 U.S.C. section 1901) exempts ritual slaughter and this exemption has been upheld as constitutional.
The kosher food industry has challenged regulations as an infringement on religious freedom.
Secular governments also have sought to restrict ritual slaughter not intended for food consumption. In the U.S., the most prominent such case is Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah
Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah
Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 , was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held an ordinance passed in Hialeah, Florida that forbade the "unnecessar[y]" killing of "an animal in a public or private ritual or ceremony not for the primary purpose of food...
. In this case, the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
ruled unconstitutional a local Florida ban on Santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
ritual animal sacrifice
Animal sacrifice
Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practised by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature...
.
Ritual slaughter practice
According to Jewish law and to Muslim law, animals must be slaughtered by a single cut to the throat. Stunning is not allowed. However, many Muslim authorities accept reversible stunning, such as electrostunning, prior to the cut.Public debates in the 1880s
In the 1880s anti-Semites joined forces with Animal Protection Societies to campaign for anti-shechita legislation to be passed in Switzerland Germany and Scandinavia.Bans in the Buddhist world against animal slaughter
Some rulers banned all killing on their land for some period each year, included ritual slaughter.After conquering Bago in 1559, King Bayinnaung
Bayinnaung
Bayinnaung Kyawhtin Nawrahta was the third king of the Toungoo dynasty of Burma . During his 30-year reign, which has been called the "greatest explosion of human energy ever seen in Burma", Bayinnaung assembled the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia, which included much of modern day...
prohibited the practice of halal
Halal
Halal is a term designating any object or an action which is permissible to use or engage in, according to Islamic law. The term is used to designate food seen as permissible according to Islamic law...
, specifically, killing food animals in the name of a god. The halal was also forbidden by King Alaungpaya
Alaungpaya
Alaungpaya was king of Burma from 1752 to 1760, and the founder of the Konbaung Dynasty. By his death in 1760, the former chief of a small village in Upper Burma had reunified all of Burma, subdued Manipur, recovered Lan Na, and driven out the French and the English who had given help to the...
in the 18th century.
According to the White History of the Tenfold Virtuous Dharma (Arban Buyantu Nom-un Caġan Teüke), Altan Khan
Altan Khan
Altan Khan , whose given name was Anda , was the ruler of the Tümet Mongols and de facto ruler of the Right Wing, or western tribes, of the Mongols...
ordered the religious code Arban Buyantu Nom-un Cagaja prohibited human and animal sacrifice.
Historic bans on religious slaughter
In Switzerland shechitah was forbidden throughout the whole country in 1893 after having been banned in the cantons of Aargau and St Gallen in 1867 after plebiscites, and later a ban was introduced in the whole of Switzerland after a plebiscite at Federal level. The system of voting on individual policies using referendums (plebiscites) had only recently been introduced. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1201&letter=S http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/swiss.htmlNorway banned religious slaughter without pre stunning in 1930. Germany banned shechita three months after Hitler came to power in 1933, Sweden banned it in 1937 and a ban was enforced in Poland with the Nazi invasion in 1939 (see section below on Nazi Germany).
Bans introduced by the German Third Reich and by Mussolini were removed by Allied Command when the Allies liberated Europe.
Opponents of ritual slaughter bans argue that the practice is humane, that no scientific evidence exists to prove that ritual slaughter causes more suffering to animals than other methods. Ritual slaughter is one of two methods of slaughter defined as humane by the federal Humane Slaughter Act in the United States.
The issue is complicated by allegations of antisemitism and xenophobia
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
. Lastly, recent debate in Switzerland has been contentious, in part, because of comparisons by a prominent activist (convicted several times of hate crimes against Jews) between kosher slaughter and the methods used by Nazis in concentration camps. (The statement: "Every day is Treblinka for the animals" is by Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer – July 24, 1991) was a Polish Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978...
.)
Nazi Germany
"One of the first enactments of the Nazis in 1933 was to outlaw the Jewish method of slaughter", said Rabbi Yehuda Brodie, registrar of the Manchester Beth Din.The Nazi propaganda film Der ewige Jude
The Eternal Jew
The Eternal Jew is an antisemitic German Nazi propaganda film, presented as a documentary. Its title in German is Der ewige Jude, the German term for the character of the "Wandering Jew" in medieval folklore. At the insistence of Nazi Germany's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, the film was...
(The Eternal Jew), designed to sow hatred for Jews, contains one scene that utterly distorts the way animals are killed in accordance with Jewish law, depicting Jews as rejoicing in the suffering of animals.
European Union
The European UnionEuropean Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
directive, "European Convention for the Protection of Animals for Slaughter", generally requires stunning before slaughter, but allows member states to allow exemptions for religious slaughter: "Each Contracting Party may authorize derogations from the provisions concerning prior stunning in the following cases: – slaughtering in accordance with religious rituals ...". The only member state of the European Union currently banning ritual slaughter without prior stunning of the animal is Sweden. Switzerland, Norway and Iceland (not EU members) are the only other countries to ban slaughter without prior stunning of the animal in Europe.
Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights
European Convention on Human Rights
The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is an international treaty to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by the then newly formed Council of Europe, the convention entered into force on 3 September 1953...
provides for a right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion which includes the freedom to manifest a religion or belief in, inter alia, practice and observance, subject only to such restrictions as are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society."
In May 2009 the European Parliament voted in favour of allowing ritual slaughter in member states.
Finland
Finland's law on slaughter dates from the 1930s and allows post-stunning thereby providing certain legislative protection for some forms of Muslim slaughter. Dhabhiha (halal slaughter) is practised in Finland, but there are not sufficient resources for Jewish slaughter, and all kosher meat is imported.France
In Jewish Liturgical Association Cha'are Shalom Ve Tsedek v. France, 27 June 2000,(App No. 27417/95) the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human RightsEuropean Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...
interpreted Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights
European Convention on Human Rights
The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is an international treaty to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by the then newly formed Council of Europe, the convention entered into force on 3 September 1953...
in a case involving a lawsuit by Glatt kosher slaughterers against a French law recognizing a non-Glatt association (the ACIP) as having the exclusive right to conduct Jewish ritual slaughter in France.
The Court stated that ritual slaughter is a practice covered by the Article 9's guarantee of the right to manifest religious observance:
- "It is not contested that ritual slaughter, as indeed its name indicates, constitutes a rite or "rite"...whose purpose is to provide Jews with meat from animals slaughtered in accordance with religious prescriptions, which is an essential aspect of practice of the Jewish religion...It follows that the applicant association can rely on Article 9 of the Convention with regard to the French authorities’ refusal to approve it, since ritual slaughter must be considered to be covered by a right guaranteed by the Convention, namely the right to manifest one's religion in observance, within the meaning of Article 9."
The Court then clarified the scope of Article 9, holding that it applies only to restrictions which would prevent consumers from being able to obtain ritually slaughtered meat:
- "In the Court's opinion, there would be interference with the freedom to manifest one's religion only if the illegality of performing ritual slaughter made it impossible for ultra-orthodox Jews to eat meat from animals slaughtered in accordance with the religious prescriptions they considered applicable. But that is not the case. It is not contested that the applicant association can easily obtain supplies of "glatt" meat in Belgium. Furthermore, it is apparent from the written depositions and bailiffs’ official reports produced by the interveners that a number of butcher's shops operating under the control of the ACIP make meat certified "glatt" by the Beth Din available to Jews."
Thus, under the Court of Human Rights' interpretation (not unanimous) of the European Convention on Human Rights in the Cha'are Shalom case, restrictions on ritual slaughter are permissible, but only if they do not prevent religious adherents from obtaining religiously slaughtered meat.
Germany
On January 15, 2002 the German Federal Constitutional Court held that the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of GermanyBasic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany
The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany is the constitution of Germany. It was formally approved on 8 May 1949, and, with the signature of the Allies of World War II on 12 May, came into effect on 23 May, as the constitution of those states of West Germany that were initially included...
provides a broader guarantee of human rights in the area of religious freedom than the European Convention on Human Rights. In an appeal by a Turkish citizen who practiced Islamic ritual slaughter, the German court struck down Germany's former ban on ritual slaughter, holding that the German Basic Law's guarantee of religious freedom prohibited the German government from applying a law requiring stunning prior to slaughter to observant Muslims who practice ritual slaughter for religious reasons, and that the Basic Law's guarantee of religious freedom applies to slaughterers as well as consumers of meat.
The German court held that under Article 2.1 of the German Basic Law, religious slaughterers have a distinct fundamental right to practice a religiously-recognized vocation. It also explained that merely permitting importation of ritually slaughtered meat is inadequate to protect the religious rights of individuals under Articles 4.1 and 4.2 of the German Basic Law (Constitution) because personal contact is important to ensuring compliance with religious requirements. It held that an exemption from laws that conflicted with this was therefore mandated:
It is true that the consumption of imported meat makes such renunciation [of meat-eating] dispensable; however, due to the fact that in this case, the personal contact to the butcher and the confidence that goes with such contact do not exist, the consumption of imported meat is fraught with the insecurity whether the meat really complies with the commandments of Islam....Under these circumstances, an exemption from the mandatory stunning of warm-blooded animals before their blood is drained cannot be precluded if the intention connected with this exemption is to facilitate, on the one hand, the practice of a profession with a religious character, which is protected by fundamental rights, and, on the other hand, the observation of religious dietary laws by the customers of the person who practices the occupation in question. Without such exemptions, the fundamental rights of those who want to perform slaughter without stunning as their occupation would be unreasonably restricted, and the interests of the protection of animals would, without a sufficient constitutional justification, be given priority in a one-sided manner.
Netherlands
The Netherlands at present does not ban ritual slaughter, although legislation to these ends is pending. The country now allows some forms of ritual slaughter due to freedom of religionFreedom of religion
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
. The Netherlands, like Switzerland, has in the past considered extending the ban in order to prohibit importing kosher products. Rabbi Melchior, who was serving as Israeli deputy foreign minister at the time of the Dutch debate, said "they simply don't want foreigners and they don't want Jews." In February 2011, a majority in parliament took position against a proposed ban on ritual slaughter without stunning, citing a Council of State advice that deems such a ban in violation of freedom of religion. However, in June 2011 the lower house of parliament passed a law, proposed by the Party for the Animals
Party for the Animals
The Party for the Animals is a political party in the Netherlands.Among its main goals are animal rights and animal welfare, though it claims not to be a single-issue party...
, banning ritual slaughter without stunning. The law provides for a temporary (for a maximum of five years) exemption from the ban if an applicant can show scientific evidence, subject to specific conditions, that the proposed method of unstunned slaughter does not cause the animal more distress than regular slaughter does. The law still has to be passed by the upper house of parliament. The earliest possibility for this to happen is autumn 2011.
Spain
Animal welfare is controlled under the provisions of the Animal Welfare Act 32/2007, of November 7th. Article 6 of the act concerns slaughter of animals, including ritual slaughter:"When the slaughter of animals is carried out according to the rites of Churches, religious denominations or communities registered in the Register of Religious Entities, and the stunning requirements are inconsistent with the rules of the respective religious rite, the competent authorities will not demand the compliance with such requirements provided that the procedure is carried out within the limits referred to in Article 3 of the Organic Law no. 7 of 5 July 1980 on Religious Freedom. In any case, the slaughter according to whatever religious rite shall be carried out under the supervision and according to the instructions of the official veterinarian. The slaughterhouse shall notify the competent authority that it will carry out this kind of slaughter in order to have it registered for this purpose, without prejudice to the authorisation provided for in the European Community legislation."
Other countries
In the rest of Europe the legal situation of ritual slaughter differs from country to country. While countries that had Nazis and antisemites in parliament and in military dictatorships in occupied Europe in the 1930s and during the war introduced bans, democratic countries - the US, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands - introduced legislation protecting shehitah. when it was seen that an international racist campaign was afoot.Prior to the rise of National Socialism in Germany, bans only existed in Switzerland, Norway and Saxony. When Hitler came to power, the German National Socialist government introduced a ban in the whole of Germany in 1933, and in Poland when it invaded in 1939. Bans were introduced in all the countries which the Nazis occupied, as well as in the countries of the Axis allies, Italy and Hungary. These were removed by order of the Allied Military authorities by a special order, and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms included sections on Religious Freedom that in the preliminary discussions, referred specifically to religious ritual slaughter bans.pages 9–10 "Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland as well as six Austrian provinces allow no exemption to pre-mortem stunning of the animal. Conversely, this exemption is granted in France, UK, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. Conditions for exemption are not always the same in all countries. For instance, in Spain exemptions only apply to sheep and goats but not to cattle."
page 14 "Eventually, in 2002, the German constitutional court granted to a Muslim butcher the right to slaughter without stunning similarly to Jewish butchers"
- Countries in which animals must be stunned right after the cut include Denmark, Finland, the Lower AustriaLower AustriaLower Austria is the northeasternmost state of the nine states in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria since 1986 is Sankt Pölten, the most recently designated capital town in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria had formerly been Vienna, even though Vienna is not officially part of Lower Austria...
province. - Countries that impose stunning before slaughter comprise Norway, IcelandIcelandIceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
, Switzerland, and Sweden. - In the Netherlands, a bill introduced by the animal rights party has passed through Parliament, but must be approved by the Senate to become law http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/dutch-parliament-approves-ban-on-religious-slaughter-1.370334
The Netherlands is one of the countries that introduced legislative protection for shehitah.
- For Belgium, Italy, Ireland, and Portugal further information is needed.
Complete information up to 1946 on every ban introduced in every country in Europe in the original languages and in English translation is to be found in Religious Freedom: The Right to Practice Shehitah Munk, Berman together with references to the original debates and an analysis that claims that up until the rise of Hitler in 1933, the international campaign to introduce ritual slaughter/ shehitah bans had failed because the vast majority of countries where legislation had been proposed rejected the legislation realising the involvement of anti-Semites in the campaign and enacted legislation to protect Jewish and Muslim slaughter. The League of Nations supported the Jewish Community of Upper Silesia against Hitler in rejecting the attempts by German officials to confiscate shehitah knives and ban Jewish slaughter.
The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms has sections on Religious Freedom. The preparatory discussions for these dealt specifically with bans imposed by Hitler on Jewish and Muslim religious slaughter, and those countries that are signatories to the Convention and have bans today are not abiding by the convention.
Norway
Norway copied the Swiss campaign to ban ritual slaughter. The same arguments were presented as in the Swiss campaign and an appeal was made by the Jewish community to the Norwegian parliament not to introduce the legislation. After the ban was introduced, Norwegian Jews imported kosher meat from Sweden until it was banned there too.In the 1890s, protests were raised in the Norwegian press against the practice of shechita. The Jewish community responded to these objections by assuring the public that the method was in fact humane. Efforts to ban shechita put sincere humane society activists in league with antisemitic
Antisemitism in Norway
While parallel to such bigotry elsewhere in Western Europe in Norway, antisemitism in Norway has had a distinct history, reaching its apex during the Holocaust in Norway...
individuals. In particular, Jonas Søhr used the cause as a means to attack not just the slaughter methods of the small Jewish community in Norway, but also the community itself. Those opposing the ban included Fridtjof Nansen
Fridtjof Nansen
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen was a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In his youth a champion skier and ice skater, he led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, and won international fame after reaching a...
, but the division on the issue crossed party lines in all mainstream parties, except the Farmer's Party, which was principled in its opposition to schechita.
The Food Health regulations were controversial, especially the stunning requirement, as they would lead to a fundamental change in the meat producing market. A committee was commissioned on February 11, 1927 that consulted numerous experts and visited a slaughterhouse in Copenhagen. Its majority favored the changes and found support in the Department of Agriculture and the parliamentary agriculture committee. Those who opposed a ban spoke of religious tolerance, and also found that schechita was no more inhumane than other slaughter methods. C J Hambro was one of those most appalled by the antisemitic invective, noting that "where animal rights are protected to an exaggerated extent, it usually is done with the help of human sacrifice"
The former chief rabbi of Norway, Michael Melchior
Michael Melchior
A renowned Jewish leader, thinker and activist, Rabbi Michael Melchior is a leading advocate for social justice in Israel, quality education for all, Jewish-Arab reconciliation and co-existence, protection of the environment, Israel-Diaspora relations and the strengthening of Civic Society as a...
, argues that antisemitism is one motive for the bans "I won't say this is the only motivation, but it's certainly no coincidence that one of the first things Nazi Germany forbade was kosher slaughter. I also know that during the original debate on this issue in Norway, where shechitah has been banned since 1930, one of the parliamentarians said straight out, 'If they don't like it, let them go live somewhere else.'"
Switzerland
The Swiss banned kosher slaughter in 1893."In Switzerland, a ban on kosher slaughter has been enforced since 1897, when the people supported this measure through a referendum with clear anti-Semitic undertones. At the time, Jews had recently been granted full civil rights and some Swiss citizens feared an invasion of Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe, who they considered to be unassimilable, foreign and unreliable. By banning the performance of a core Jewish ritual, the Swiss people found a disguised way to limit the immigration of Jews into Switzerland."
According to the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour "Ritual slaughter (the bleeding to death of animals that have not first been stunned) was made illegal in the country in 1893; however, a 1978 Law on the Protection of Animals explicitly allows for the importation of kosher and halal meat. Imported from France and Germany, this meat is available in the country at comparable prices. In 2003, a popular initiative to protect animal rights and prohibit the import of meat from animals bled without stunning was filed; in December 2005, however, the sponsors withdrew their initiative before it had been submitted to a national vote after Parliament adopted a revision of the Law on the Protection of Animals."
There was a backlash against a proposal to lift the ban in 2002.
"In 2002, when the Swiss government attempted to lift the century-old ban, animal rights activists, political groups (on the left and the right), and unaffiliated citizens expressed strong opposition. They called shechita practice a "barbaric" and "sanguinary", an "archaic tradition from the time of the ghettos", and asked Jews to either become vegetarian or leave the country."
Proposals to extend ban to imports
Switzerland have considered extending the ban in order to prohibit importing kosher products. The Swiss Animal Association called for a referendum on banning kosher imports. Christopher Blocher, a cabinet minister for the Swiss People's PartySwiss People's Party
The Swiss People's Party , also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre , is a conservative political party in Switzerland. Chaired by Toni Brunner, but spearheaded by Christoph Blocher, the party is the largest party in the Federal Assembly, with 58 members of the National Council and 6 of...
, has supported calls to ban the import of kosher and halal meat.
"A recent survey showed more than three-quarters of the population said they would like to see their government ban even the import of kosher meat. Erwin Kessler, an animal rights activist, has been campaigning vigorously for this. He's 40,000 short of the 100,000 signatures needed to trigger a referendum to completely ban kosher and halal meat entering Switzerland. Kessler has inflamed the controversy by publicly comparing kosher slaughter to the methods used by Nazis in concentration camps, but denies that his motives are, in fact, anti-semitic."
"Should a proposed ban on the import of kosher meat be accepted by the Swiss people in 2006, it will effectively force Jews who observe kashrut to abstain from the consumption of meat. Muslims will also be affected by this move."
United States
The United States is one of the countries that has legislation for protection of shechita (Jewish) and dhabihah (Muslim) ritual slaughter.The Humane Slaughter Act
Humane Slaughter Act
The Humane Slaughter Act, or the Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act, is a United States federal law designed to protect livestock during slaughter. It was passed in 1958...
defines ritual slaughter as one of two humane methods of slaughter.
Since 1958 the United States has prohibited the shackling and hoisting of cattle without stunning them first.
In Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah
Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah
Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 , was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held an ordinance passed in Hialeah, Florida that forbade the "unnecessar[y]" killing of "an animal in a public or private ritual or ceremony not for the primary purpose of food...
508 U.S. 520 (1993), the United States Supreme Court struck down a ban imposed by the City of Hialeah, Florida
Hialeah, Florida
Hialeah is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 226,419. As of 2009, the population estimate by the U. S...
, on Santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
religious animal sacrifices practiced by the Church as contravening the religious freedoms guaranteed by the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution of the United States. While the City of Hialeah claimed that its ban on ritual slaughter "not for the primary purpose of food consumption" was motivated by concerns for animal welfare and public health, the Supreme Court held that ample evidence showed that it was in fact motivated by animosity to the Santería religion and a desire to suppress it:
- That the ordinances were enacted "'because of,' not merely 'in spite of'", their suppression of Santería religious practice is revealed by the events preceding enactment of the ordinances. The minutes and taped excerpts of the June 9 session, both of which are in the record, evidence significant hostility exhibited by residents, members of the city council, and other city officials toward the Santería religion and its practice of animal sacrifice. The public crowd that attended the June 9 meetings interrupted statements by council members critical of Santería with cheers and the brief comments of Pichardo with taunts. When Councilman Martinez, a supporter of the ordinances, stated that in pre-revolution Cuba "people were put in jail for practicing this religion", the audience applauded. Other statements by members of the city council were in a similar vein. For example, Councilman Martinez, after noting his belief that Santería was outlawed in Cuba, questioned, "if we could not practice this [religion] in our homeland [Cuba], why bring it to this country?" Councilman Cardoso said that Santería devotees at the Church "are in violation of everything this country stands for."...Various Hialeah city officials made comparable comments. The chaplain of the Hialeah Police Department told the city council that Santería was a sin, "foolishness", "an abomination to the Lord", and the worship of "demons." He advised the city council that "We need to be helping people and sharing with them the truth that is found in Jesus Christ." He concluded: "I would exhort you . . . not to permit this Church to exist." The city attorney commented that Resolution 87-66 indicated that "This community will not tolerate religious practices which are abhorrent to its citizens . . . ." Similar comments were made by the deputy city attorney. This history discloses the object of the ordinances to target animal sacrifice by Santería worshippers because of its religious motivation.
- In sum, the neutrality inquiry leads to one conclusion: The ordinances had as their object the suppression of religion. The pattern we have recited discloses animosity to Santería adherents and their religious practices; the ordinances by their own terms target this religious exercise; the texts of the ordinances were gerrymandered with care to proscribe religious killings of animals but to exclude almost all secular killings; and the ordinances suppress much more religious conduct than is necessary in order to achieve the legitimate ends asserted in their defense. These ordinances are not neutral, and the court below committed clear error in failing to reach this conclusion
The Court also found that the city's proffered reasons for its ban simply did not explain or justify it.
- Respondent claims that [the ordinances] advance two interests: protecting the public health and preventing cruelty to animals. The ordinances are underinclusive for those ends. They fail to prohibit non religious conduct that endangers these interests in a similar or greater degree than Santería sacrifice does. The underinclusion is substantial, not inconsequential. Despite the city's proffered interest in preventing cruelty to animals, the ordinances are drafted with care to forbid few killings but those occasioned by religious sacrifice. Many types of animal deaths or kills for nonreligious reasons are either not prohibited or approved by express provision.
The United States Supreme Court held that animal sacrifice and ritual slaughter were practices protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty and that government could not enact targeted legislation suppressing religious practices under a guise of protecting animal welfare or promoting public health.
Temple Grandin
Temple Grandin
Temple Grandin is an American doctor of animal science and professor at Colorado State University, bestselling author, and consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior...
, who is both an animal welfare activist and the leading American designer of commercial slaughterhouses, has outlined techniques for humane ritual slaughter. She considers shackling and hoisting of animals for slaughter to be inhumane, and has developed alternative approaches usable in production plants. Grandin has coordinated this with the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards is the central authority on halakha within Conservative Judaism; it is one of the most active and widely known committees on the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly. Within the movement it is known as the CJLS...
of the Conservative movement in the United States, and in 2000 the Committee voted to accept her approach, ruling that "Now that kosher, humane slaughter using upright pens is both possible and widespread, we find shackling and hoisting to be a violation of Jewish laws forbidding cruelty to animals and requiring that we avoid unnecessary dangers to human life. As the CJLS, then, we rule that shackling and hoisting should be stopped."
In an investigation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an American animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president. A non-profit corporation with 300 employees and two million members and supporters, it claims to be the largest animal rights...
, undercover video was obtained of kosher slaughtering practices at a major kosher slaughterhouse run by Agriprocessors
Agriprocessors
Agriprocessors was the corporate identity of a slaughterhouse and meat-packaging factory based in Postville, Iowa, best known as a facility for the glatt kosher processing of cattle, as well as chicken, turkey, duck, and lamb. Agriprocessors' meat and poultry products were marketed under the brand...
in Postville, Iowa
Postville, Iowa
Postville is a city in Allamakee and Clayton Counties in the U.S. state of Iowa. It lies near the junction of four counties and at the intersection of U.S. Routes 18 and 52 and Iowa Highway 51, with airport facilities in the neighboring communities of Waukon, Decorah, Monona, and Prairie du Chien....
. The methods used there involved clamping the animals into a box which is then inverted for slaughter, followed by partial dismemberment of the animal before it was dead. Those methods have been condemned as unnecessarily cruel by PETA and others, including Grandin and the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, but are endorsed by the Orthodox Union
Orthodox Union
The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America , more popularly known as the Orthodox Union , is one of the oldest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the United States. It is best known for its kosher food preparation supervision service...
, which supervises the slaughterhouse. An investigation by the USDA
United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food...
resulted in some minor operational changes. A lawsuit under Iowa law is pending. Grandin's comment was "I thought it was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. I couldn't believe it. I've been in at least 30 other kosher slaughter plants, and I had never ever seen that kind of procedure done before. ...
I've seen kosher slaughter really done right, so the problem here is not kosher slaughter. The problem here is a plant that is doing everything wrong they can do wrong". In 2006 the Orthodox Union, Temple Grandin and Agriprocessors had reportedly resolved their problems. In 2008, though, Grandin reported that Agriprocessors had again become "sloppy" in their slaughter operation and was "in the bottom 10%" of slaughterhouses.
See also
- ShechitaShechitaShechita is the ritual slaughter of mammals and birds according to Jewish dietary laws...
Jewish method of ritual slaughter - Dhabihah Muslim method of ritual slaughter
- JhatkaJhatkaJhatka or Chatka meat is meat from an animal which has been killed by a single strike of a sword or axe to sever the head, as opposed to Jewish slaughter or Islamic slaughter in which the animal is killed by ritually slicing the throat.-Jhatka meat and Sikhs:Jhatka for Sikhs is the...
antithesis of ritual slaughter - Animal sacrificeAnimal sacrificeAnimal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practised by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature...
- Animal welfareAnimal welfareAnimal welfare is the physical and psychological well-being of animals.The term animal welfare can also mean human concern for animal welfare or a position in a debate on animal ethics and animal rights...
- Animal welfare in Nazi GermanyAnimal welfare in Nazi GermanyThere was widespread support for animal welfare in Nazi Germany and the Nazis took several measures to ensure protection of animals. Many Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring, were supporters of animal protection. Several Nazis were environmentalists, and species protection and...
- DIALRELDIALRELDIALREL was a project financed by the EU...
Further reading
- Pascal Krauthammer Das Schächtverbot in der Schweiz (The Religious Slaughtering Ban in Switzerland) includes a summary in English.
- Legislation protecting shechita : text of laws and regulations in various countries / compiled by Michael L. Munk; Agudath Israel of America. Legislative Commission of Agudath Israel of America, 1976
- John M. Efron: The Most Cruel Cut of All? The Campaign Against Jewish Ritual Slaughter in Fin-de-Siècle Switzerland and Germany. Abstracts of 3 touching on Switzerland and anti-shehitah legislation.
- Michael F Metcalf "Regulating slaughter: animal protection and Antisemitism in Scandinavia, 1880–1941" in Patterns of Prejudice; 23 (1989)
- Robin Judd Contested Rituals: Circumcision, Kosher Butchering, and Jewish Political Life in Germany, 1843–1933
- Solomon David Sassoon. A Critical Study of Electrical Stunning and the Jewish Method of Slaughter (Shehita). Letchworth Herts. 48pp
- http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:U7rlQN-LKqoJ:www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/31616/response/85872/attach/6/Part%252009%2520Dissertation..pdf+levinger+vegetarian+shechita&hl=sv&gl=se&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShO9qohEQWYLOs8JJjTWzOsc0r17CYrQFcBrwx9rr8GuZFsA7OPPuFGRbG_axqKKpV-xC4ba4WUEkSFQVxwjl9YkzZ0bKlcFBBuuPKyMr3uT-9a4ikqrEUR6yTD3yfxq5qc6GJY&sig=AHIEtbRYbgPVLZA6jPCmR8J-RwviOaHFyg&pli=1Challenges to Shechita and its Protection by Government and Legislation in Late 20th Century Britain Neville Kesselman]