Friday, April 8, 2011
Dutch Consider Banning Religious Animal Slaughter
The story is here, and particularly interesting is the union of anti-Muslim/immigrant and animal rights forces. Strange bed-fellows indeed. I also did not know that the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, as well as Switzerland, have long-standing bans on these practices whose troubling source is the pre-WWII period.
Difficult times for Europe.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/04/dutch-consider-banning-religious-animal-slaughter.html
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I know the Supreme Court has ruled that a law passed with the intention of prohibiting the ritual slaughter of animals as a religious practice is unconstitutional (even if the law doesn't explicitly state its intention to suppress a religious practice). It is unclear to me whether a ban that could be shown to be entirely based on the prevention of cruelty to animals would be unconstitutional. From the article, it seems very likely that the Freedom Party's motives are highly questionable, but one may presume the Party of Animals really are concerned about animal suffering. (Obviously US Supreme Court rulings have nothing to do with Dutch practices.)
I suppose it is possible that some day advocates for animal rights will persuade a significant portion of the population that certain practices involving animals are inhumane (for example, castrating pigs, universally practice by the US pork industry) and must either be done in a more human manner or be discontinued. But I don't think we are there yet.