A Belgian ban on the Muslim and Jewish ways of ritually slaughtering animals went into effect on New Year’s Day, part of a clash across Europe over the balance between animal welfare and religious freedom.
With both animal rights advocates and right-wing nationalists pushing to ban ritual slaughter, religious minorities in Belgium and other countries fear that they are the targets of bigotry under the guise of animal protection.
“It is impossible to know the true intentions of people,” said Yaakov David Schmahl, a senior rabbi in Antwerp. “Unless people state clearly what they have in mind, but most anti-Semites don’t do that.”
Laws across Europe and European Union regulations require that animals be rendered insensible to pain before slaughter, to make the process more humane. For larger animals, stunning before slaughter usually means using a “captive bolt” device that fires a metal rod into the brain; for poultry it usually means an electric shock. Animals can also be knocked out with gas.
But slaughter by Muslim halal and Jewish kosher rules requires that an animal be in perfect health — which religious authorities say rules out stunning it first — and be killed with a single cut to the neck that severs critical blood vessels. The animal loses consciousness in seconds, and advocates say it may cause less suffering than other methods, not more.
Most countries and the European Union allow religious exceptions to the stunning requirement, though in some places — like the Netherlands, where a new law took effect last year, and Germany — the exceptions are very narrow. Belgium is joining Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Slovenia among the nations that do not provide for any exceptions.
The law that took effect on Tuesday applies in the northern Belgian region of Flanders; a similar one will take effect later this year in the southern region of Wallonia.
The idea for the ban was first proposed by Ben Weyts, a right-wing Flemish nationalist and the minister in the Flanders government who is responsible for animal welfare. Mr. Weyts was heavily criticized in 2014 for attending the 90th birthday of Bob Maes, who had collaborated with the Nazi occupation of Belgium in World War II and later became a far-right politician.
Justyna has been told to “go home” at least twice by her patients at a hospital in south-west England. The Polish nurse said even her colleagues treat her “like an intruder” and tell her she can always “go back to Poland” if she complains about the work rota.
But it is not the animosity that bothers her. When she arrived in the UK three years ago, living and working standards were higher than in Poland. Since the 2016 EU referendum, prices have risen and a promised salary increase has proved to be tiny. Half the European staff on her ward have resigned and her employment conditions have worsened.
Justyna and her husband, an engineer, are also weighing up whether to leave. “We have given ourselves time until a final Brexit deal is in place to make the decision,” she said.