“So special!” wrote ChabadGirl who spotted this story on israelnationalnews.com and submitted it for publication.
“I hope they enjoy Islamic rule and sharia.”
A European Union food safety committee chose the first day of Passover to approve a proposal designed to steer consumers away from buying kosher meat by labelling it as “meat from slaughter without stunning.”
The proposal will be presented to the EU parliament in July and differs from a decision two years ago by the European Union Council of Agricultural Ministers, which officially recognized shechita – Jewish kosher slaughter.
The new draft proposal does not restrict the sale of meat that is slaughtered according to Jewish law but highlights the lack of stunning, which animal rights activists arguably claim is a more humane method for killing animals.
Rabbi Aryeh Goldberg, Deputy Director of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE), decried the timing of the vote with the first day of the Passover holiday and vowed to convince EU legislators to defeat the proposal, the European Jewish Press reported.
"It is inconceivable that members of the European Parliament, representing Jewish communities across Europe, could not have chosen another day to vote on such a tendentious issue that gravely affects European Jewry," Rabbi Goldberg said.
"The laws themselves appear to discriminate against the Jewish community as no other method of slaughter will be mentioned.
"However, just as we learn in the Passover story that the Jewish people will overcome adversity, so we will overcome this as well and the RCE will use all its efforts to defeat this when it comes for the official vote."
The draft legislation, if adopted, could lead to a massive drop in non-Jewish sales and a subsequent substantial rise in the price of kosher meat. Many non-Jews consider kosher food, including meat, safer and healthier than non-kosher food.
According to the RCE, the draft legislation "runs contrary to the European Union’s own guidelines, not only about freedom of religion, but also the fact that shechita has been proven to be one of the most humane ways of animal slaughter."
READ: DUTCH MAY BAN SHECHITA
recently published on MyShtetl
The story above is a far cry from the EU position in this recent report:
EU Exempts Jewish Slaughter from Pre-Stunning
The European Union Council of Agricultural Ministers officially recognized shechitah – Jewish kosher slaughter – on Monday. The Council voted not only to recognize shechitah, but also to require that kosher meat be traded and sold freely in every EU member state.
However, individual states may still reserve the right to "invoke stricter guidelines" regarding shechitah. Thus, the five EU countries that currently ban Jewish slaughter – Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia – will apparently not have to change their laws.
Aba Dunner, Executive Director of the Conference of European Rabbis, explained the vote: "The [new] regulation specifically exempts religious communities from the requirement to pre-stun animals in the slaughter process. It also contains no requirements for discriminatory labeling for meat slaughtered using the shechitah method, nor for post-cut stunning to be enforced.”
“Furthermore,” Dunner said, “no member state will be able to prevent meat slaughtered according to the Jewish religious method from being traded in its territory.”
"The European Jewish Congress (EJC), the Conference of European Rabbis and Shechita EU have been working closely together to achieve these positive outcomes,” noted EJC president Dr. Moshe Kantor.
Kantor said, “The European Jewish Congress is delighted that the new EU regulation ensures that communities in member states that slaughter animals for food according to humane Jewish law will be able to continue doing so. This regulation protects the fundamental rights of Europe’s religious minorities.”
“At the same time,” Kantor added, “we must remain vigilant to ensure that individual governments do not seek to impose new requirements on religious slaughter.”
The vote was the result of intense negotiations, which led to the compromise allowing individual countries to enforce stricter regulations. On the other hand, the EJC succeeded in including the clause recognizing shechitah as legitimate, and removing clauses outlawing trade in kosher meat, labelling, and pre-stunning.
Go figure – one wonders if the left hand knows what the right hand is doing in the EU?
