Senate says no to ban on ritual slaughter

Tuesday 19 June 2012

A majority of senators in the upper house of parliament voted on Tuesday not to ban the ritual slaughter of animals.

The draft legislation was introduced by the pro-animal PvdD in the lower house in June 2011 and passed by a large majority of MPs. It first went to the senate last December but was voted out.

At the time, party leader Marianne Thieme blamed the failure to get it through the senate on 'an enormous lobby' by religious groups. She vowed to start working on a new law.

It is this new legislation which has now lost the vote for a second time in the senate. Most of the major parties voted against, saying it went against the law on religious freedom.

Forty seconds

Thieme is concerned that animals being ritually slaughtered are conscious of their death for four minutes, when there are good anaesthetics available.

During the first debate on the subject, junior farm minister Henk Bleeker presented a draft covenant which would involve exempting abattoirs from the ban if they could show animals died within 40 seconds. He has since reached an agreement on this covenant with Islamic and Jewish groups.

The rabbinical court has since said it will not recognise the covenant, throwing its success into doubt.

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