Kosher or Animal Cruelty?

Well, i am afraid I am on the side of the animal cruelty people. Yes, we have spoken about this many times, at end of the day, we are killing the animal so drawing the line on how you kill the animal is hypocrisy, but then the idea is that you do need protein and please do not get me started on the vegetarian argument, but you do not need to needlessly torture or cause pain to the animals. And yes, many animal farms are bad but that’s not what the usual laws state. The law states, in countries like UK and USA and EU and and and that you are not to do cruelty to animals and there is a pretty good state of history and precedent in defining what cruelty is.

See what the Dutch are doing. I quote:

The bill sponsored by the tiny Animal Rights Party, the first such group in Europe to win seats in a national parliament, passed the lower house of parliament and must be approved by the upper house before becoming law. It stipulates that livestock must be stunned before being slaughtered, contrary to the Jewish kashrut laws and Muslim halal laws that specify that animals killed for their meat must be unwounded at the time of slaughtering. Stunning damages the nervous system.
“This way of killing causes unnecessary pain to animals. Religious freedom cannot be unlimited,” Marianne Thieme, head of Animal Rights Party, said before the vote. “For us religious freedom stops where human or animal suffering begins.”

So what are the Jews saying?

“Has the freedom of religion already been ritually slaughtered?” wondered a tweeter named ‘Bozoc.’ The Netherlands’ Muslim and Jewish communities – about 1 million and 40,000, respectively, in a total population of 16 million – have condemned the proposed ban as a violation of their religious freedom. But as Jacobs pointed out on Tuesday, “only the most observant Muslims – some 30 percent of the total – are against stunning animals.”

But this isnt a question of freedom of religion. You have the right to practise whatever religion you wish as long as your rights do not interfere with other people’s rights. And as it turns out, animals have a right not to have a cruel death. Mind you, the animals do not have a right to life (that’s an interesting conundrum) but there you go.

Incidentally, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland ban ritual slaughter already. So there is precedent. And yes, male circumcision is as bad as FGM. Let the kid grow up, when he is an adult, he can make the decision to lop off the tip of his todger or to put in a ring.

Incidentally, check this situation out about dogs who get their tails docked.

"MPs have rightly signalled that it is unacceptable in a civilised society to amputate a puppy's tail purely because some people think that it is aesthetically pleasing to disable a dog in this way," he said.

Well said, the idea that for cosmetic or silly sod religions reasons you will go about inflicting cruelty to animals is frankly Neanderthal.