The National Rally is now firmly positioned on the thorny subject of animal welfare. During his appearance on the debate organised by the Grand Jury RTL -LCI- Le Figaro, Jordan Bardella said that the ritual slaughter of animals was “unworthy” and that stunning animals must be made “mandatory”.
Asked about his possible opposition to ritual slaughter for kosher and halaal meat, the head of the NR list in the European elections replied: “I am consistent and I am generally opposed to it. The question is not ‘Are we against halaal, kosher or other practices?’ The question is that today I consider ritual slaughter as unworthy, it’s an absolutely terrible suffering for animals.”
In February, the European court ruled that the European organic label can not be applied to meat from ritual slaughter without prior stunning, as the method does not meet the “highest standards of animal welfare”.
In an interview with Franz-Olivier Giesbert, former actress Brigitte Bardot was also indignant about the ritual slaughter practiced by the Muslim community.
Bardot gave an interview to journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert for the programme Les Terriens du Dimanche. The former actress expressed her great anger against those who practice ritual slaughter.
This tradition, which concerns mainly Jews and Muslims, consists of killing the animal without first stunning it.
“I am very up against some journalists and politicians who drag me in the mud because they call me racist because I am against the ritual slaughter. I want to vomit, it’s disgusting … Bleeding animals without stunning them and then call it a tradition. I think I could kill to prevent this massacre. It is a massacre of innocents… They make them suffer in the name of some bullshit that is medieval, which dates back millennia and has not evolved,” she noted.
Ritual slaughter as a mandatory method of slaughter for food production and is practiced by Muslim and Jewish communities totaling nearly 25 percent of the world population. Both communities have similar religious philosophies in this regard.
The Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), which advises British government on how to avoid cruelty to livestock, has said that the way Jewish Kosher and Muslim Halal meat is produced causes severe suffering to animals.
Ritual slaughter is in many EU countries the only exception from the standard requirement, guarded by criminal law, to render animal unconscious before slaughter.
A number of countries in Europe (as well as Australia) have issued restrictions or outright bans on ritual slaughter. As of 2018, Slovenia is the only European country which has prohibited ritual slaughter altogether.
A number of other countries, most notably in Scandinavia, has introduced legal requirements for animals to be stunned either before or just after having their throats cut during ritual slaughter.
In 2014 Denmark ruled that Islamic and Jewish slaughter practices are inhumane, requiring that all animals be stunned before being killed for food, sparking a debate on religious freedom and the relative harms of different methods.
While the Jews accept absolutely no stunning (rendering unconscious prior to cutting), many Muslims have accepted it as long as it can be shown that the animal could be returned to normal living consciousness (so that stunning does not kill an animal but is intended to render following procedure painless).
Ritual slaughter with a sharp knife is however classified in the US as “humane” under the Humane Slaughter Act and practiced with no restrictions.