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World Dutch Close To Ban On Kosher, Halal Slaughter

spnadmin

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THE Dutch Parliament has passed a bill banning the slaughter of livestock without stunning it first, removing an exemption that allowed Jews and Muslims to butcher animals according to their centuries-old dietary rules.
If enacted and enforced, religious groups say observant Jews and Muslims would have to import meat, stop eating it altogether, or leave the Netherlands.
However, the bill must still pass the Senate, which is unlikely before the summer recess, and the cabinet said the law may be unenforceable in its current form due in part to ambiguity introduced in a last-minute amendment.

If the Netherlands outlaws procedures that make meat kosher for Jews or halal for Muslims, it will be the second country, after New Zealand, to do so in recent years. It will join Switzerland, the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, whose bans are mostly traceable to pre-World War II anti-Semitism.

Marianne Thieme of the Party for the Animals, the world's first animal rights party to win seats in a national Parliament, welcomed the approval of the bill that she had first introduced in 2008, and said she was now prepared to defend it in the Senate.

''It's a great honour,'' she said. She has argued that sparing animals needless pain and distress outweighs religious groups' rights to follow slaughter practices ''no longer of our time''.

But the threat of a ban has led to outcry from Jewish and Muslim groups, who say it infringes on their right to freedom of religion.

A solid majority of Dutch voters say they support the ban, and Parliament voted for the ban by a margin of 116-30. Support for the ban came from the political left, which sees ritual slaughter as inhumane, and from the anti-immigration right, which sees it as foreign and barbaric.

AP



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/dutc...l-slaughter-20110629-1gr2k.html#ixzz1QuV4f7dg
 

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Annie

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Jun 12, 2011
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I can't speak for halal, but the Jewish (kosher) laws of slaughter are intended to cause as little pain as possible to the animal. To be kosher, an animal must have been raised in a humane way. It must be killed by a pious man who is well educated in their holy book, the Torah. The throat of the animal must be cut in one smooth motion with a sharp ceremonial knife that has no nicks, so that the animal feels it as little as possible, and the blood loss to the animal's brain causes loss of consciousness as quickly as possible.

The Jews sincerely believe they are doing the right thing. Personally I'm not sure if stunning an animal with electricity or other means is better than the way the Jews do it. It must not be a pleasant feeling to get one's throat slit; but neither is being electrocued.
 

spnadmin

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Annie ji

Thanks for your informed reply. I a few years back consulted on this point and received the same information from a local rabbinical college. It is really important that halal and kosher slaughter not be lumped together for the reasons you give.

Sikh prohibitions are based on the ritual aspects and nothing else.

The Dutch will of course have to play this out in their own way and decide what the social consequences of their policy making are tolerable. The concerns in Europe are huge that the growth of muslim immigrant populations will swamp historical values of their local cultures. The slaughter policy follows a contemporary trend to ban the burqa. That led to bans on turbans for Sikh men. Both banning the burqa and the laws governing animal slaughter have an impact on other religious minorities who are also swept into a net that undermines their religious expression.
 

hpannu

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Dec 17, 2007
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To be kosher, an animal must have been raised in a humane way.

Dear Annie - there is no humane way to raise the animal. Atleast i believe it that way. Gone are the days when you raised an animal to be consumed later. I have done it and experienced it. It's commercial industry now. If you truly believe in what you say ? I want to ask you this. do you buy your meat from a store ? Majority of the people i speak to don't want to know how it was raised or killed. Because in the back of there mind there is a guilty feeling. And this applies to all of us not just Jewish people.

When i used to eat meat I slaughtered it with my own hands. Inside me i didn't feel good about it and gave up eating meat. It was an inner call when i was 16 year old.

I can make the same argument with the Sikh folks who believe that Jhatka meat is ok to be consumed. My question to them is how many of them Jhatka a animal ? to be consumed later. If they are buying from stores it's not Jhatka.

Bhullan nun Maaf karna ji ( please accept my apologies )

Harjot Singh
 

kds1980

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Dear Annie - there is no humane way to raise the animal. Atleast i believe it that way. Gone are the days when you raised an animal to be consumed later. I have done it and experienced it. It's commercial industry now. If you truly believe in what you say ? I want to ask you this. do you buy your meat from a store ? Majority of the people i speak to don't want to know how it was raised or killed. Because in the back of there mind there is a guilty feeling. And this applies to all of us not just Jewish people.

Why only this logic is applicable on meat ? What about milk ? what about Other foodgrains and vegetables where heavy amount of pesticide is used .Also what about large number of consumer goods which are now produced in China with heavy labour exploitation.What surprises me how people get emotional about meat but at the same time they go and purchase Cheap consumer and luxury goods which most of them are produced on heavy labour exploitation in China or Other 3rd world country
 

Harry Haller

Panga Master
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If tapwater contains microscopic parasites, how large does a living being have to be before we feel guilty about eating it, large enough to make a noise, large enough to bleed? or is it a case that if no one hears the tree falling in the forest than it has not actually happened
 

BhagatSingh

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Apr 24, 2006
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Not about bleeding or making noises but consciousness. Are they conscious enough to suffer? Clearly cows, pigs, chickens are conscious, they do suffer in tight spaces with hardly much room to breath; they do suffer in factory farms.

The only way to humanely eat meat is to have your own regular, pind-style farm or grab meat from a friend's pind-style farm. If you do, then it hardly matters how you kill the animal since it's whole life it enjoyed, in wide open fields, free from predators, with human servants. The last few moments are less important.

Trying to reduce human/animal suffering is what it's all about. Hence what Kds ji's point is equally important, if not more so.

All this (modern) technological infrastructure, all these people can now live in one country. Farms need to be shut down and factory farms need to be opened. (Education is based on this type of industrial model. Hinders creativity and human flourishing. Look up "Ken Robinson TED talk" on youtube. First two links.)

I believe modern technology has created more problems than it has solved. We quickly run after the quick fix, while breaking everything behind us. Modern technology makes us think of the world as a quantitative skeleton - food becomes %fat, % protein, students in a university become billing units, animals become "Grams of meat". Thus, it never gives us a chance to develop reverence towards other life, towards nature... and perhaps more importantly towards each other!

Also if you have been in a metropolis, the entire thing, although beautiful on one level, is so stiff, straight edges, etc. 50 buildings of the exact same form, erected all in the same area!? We have created our environment so that nature is hardly present around us. There are no stiff, straight edges in nature, no two things look alike, so complex, so rich, so vivid, if you only look once. It is uplifting, breathtaking, so vast and right in your face, but invisible to most people. What is visible is the cellphone, emails, and the time. Mere numbers and words more important than nature itself? Madness, is it not?

It would take much more concentration to pay attention to the bit of nature that is present in our modern environments (tiny shrubs, dirt, hardly visible clouds, few trees). But no one has this concentration because information is rapidly pumped into our minds, so fast we could choose not to pay any attention and yet we will pick out "there" product, watch "there" TV show, movies, etc. Buildings closed off from the outside, with four walls and a roof. Cut you right off from anything outside. Internet, chat rooms, youtube, forums... sadly what I am doing right now.

Why is nature so important one might ask? The answer is very simple, under our noses, but hardly ever realized (intuitively), we ARE nature. This needs to be realized if we want to get out of our mess. Of course, to realize this one must concentrate, contemplate, meditate... who has time for that? Make time. Go and just look at clouds, trees, birds, listen to all the sounds. It's heaven.

These issues go much deeper and lead me right to the core essence of all faiths, spirituality itself. But who wants to become a servant? We all want to be rulers. Rulers of earth who first pis*ed on it then blew it up...

(some pessimism but necessary to get the point across)

With that said, other TED talks reveal that people are waking up to this. You know, the fact that there are discussions of working with nature instead of against it, discussions of spirituality on various forums, etc.
 

Annie

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Jun 12, 2011
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Dear Annie - there is no humane way to raise the animal. Atleast i believe it that way. Gone are the days when you raised an animal to be consumed later. I have done it and experienced it. It's commercial industry now.
Hpannu ji,

Yes, it's sad how a lot of animals are treated; however, I saw farms all the time when I lived in California (3 years ago) where the animals seemed fine, healthy, and had room to walk around.
If you truly believe in what you say ?
I'm just explaining the kosher laws regarding slaughter, and why they are probably no worse than the secular way of slaughtering animals. It's not what I believe, it's a fact. Look it up on the internet.
I want to ask you this. do you buy your meat from a store ?
I don't see why my personal diet is an issue here, but yes I do buy meat from stores. I was a vegetarian for several years, but started having health problems and unfortunately had to go back to eating at least some meat.

Edit: It appears that our entire food industry needs a major change. The only thing corporations seem to understand is money, so we have to "vote with our wallets" as much as we are able to.
 
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hpannu

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Dec 17, 2007
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Why only this logic is applicable on meat ? What about milk ? what about Other foodgrains and vegetables where heavy amount of pesticide is used .Also what about large number of consumer goods which are now produced in China with heavy labour exploitation.What surprises me how people get emotional about meat but at the same time they go and purchase Cheap consumer and luxury goods which most of them are produced on heavy labour exploitation in China or Other 3rd world country

Dear KDS Ji,

Logical difference between an animal and Banaspat (Vegetation) is - banaspat grows when you chop it and animal doesn't. I am also in favor of going back to the roots ( away from commercial markets ). I hear lots of complaints about pesticides in India but people are not growing veggies at home. They buy it from street vendors encouraging farmers to grow more and more. Someone will capitalize when situation is like this.
 

kds1980

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Apr 3, 2005
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Dear KDS Ji,

Logical difference between an animal and Banaspat (Vegetation) is - banaspat grows when you chop it and animal doesn't. I am also in favor of going back to the roots ( away from commercial markets ). I hear lots of complaints about pesticides in India but people are not growing veggies at home. They buy it from street vendors encouraging farmers to grow more and more. Someone will capitalize when situation is like this.

Hpannu ji

I am not comparing animal with plant ,I am just telling deadly effect of pesticide's which kill lots of insects and also destroy environment, as far going back to roots is concerned it is not possible ,because then there will be starvation in India.A country with barely 32 sq lakh Km cannot give food to 1.2 billion population without commercialisation of vegetable industry
 

hpannu

SPNer
Dec 17, 2007
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Dear Annie,

Please don't be offended by my comments. I am not here to argue, just trying to make a point that commercialization is ruining us. If it was me I would like to roll back atleast 100 years ago.
 

findingmyway

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Aug 17, 2010
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World citizen!
If the Netherlands outlaws procedures that make meat kosher for Jews or halal for Muslims, it will be the second country, after New Zealand, to do so in recent years. It will join Switzerland, the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, whose bans are mostly traceable to pre-World War II anti-Semitism.

All New Zealand lamb is halal.

The only way to humanely eat meat is to have your own regular, pind-style farm or grab meat from a friend's pind-style farm. If you do, then it hardly matters how you kill the animal since it's whole life it enjoyed, in wide open fields, free from predators, with human servants. The last few moments are less important.

Free range
 

Gyani Jarnail Singh

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KUALA LUMPUR MALAYSIA
Hpannu ji

I am not comparing animal with plant ,I am just telling deadly effect of pesticide's which kill lots of insects and also destroy environment, as far going back to roots is concerned it is not possible ,because then there will be starvation in India.A country with barely 32 sq lakh Km cannot give food to 1.2 billion population without commercialisation of vegetable industry

Kds Ji..
A lot of so called "food shortages" is also political...based ?? Wittness the treatment towards the Punjab farmer ?? wittness the huge hoards of wheat rice etc ROTTING in the warehouses..out in the open...getting flooded and waiting to be tunred into FERTILISER !! isnt that outrageous and horrendous ??

Same story in the WEST...Millions of gallons of Milk shipped in containers and dumped at sea..to keep prices high...billions of tons of wheat etc dumped at sea...same reason..cheese..veges etc..buried...

There is ENOUGH FOOD to feed all..but not enough to feed the GREED of a FEW !! Thats the problem..as I see it...
 

kds1980

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Apr 3, 2005
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Kds Ji..
A lot of so called "food shortages" is also political...based ?? Wittness the treatment towards the Punjab farmer ?? wittness the huge hoards of wheat rice etc ROTTING in the warehouses..out in the open...getting flooded and waiting to be tunred into FERTILISER !! isnt that outrageous and horrendous ??

Same story in the WEST...Millions of gallons of Milk shipped in containers and dumped at sea..to keep prices high...billions of tons of wheat etc dumped at sea...same reason..cheese..veges etc..buried...

There is ENOUGH FOOD to feed all..but not enough to feed the GREED of a FEW !! Thats the problem..as I see it...

Gyani ji

I understand your point and rotting of food and inaction by Government is outrageous ,but we have to accept this and side effects of Capitalism and Democracy.

On the other hand what I am saying is factory farming of either meat or vegetables is the only way to keep price down.Let me give you example ,when I was growing Up Goat meat was priced at 35-40 kg, good quality Sea Fish 25 -35 Kg and Chicken 50 Kg .Now what happened in 90s was the price of Goat meat and Fish sky rocketed in but the price of Chicken increased slightly .The situation today is Goat meat 300 per Kg Fish 400 - 500 and Chicken only 150 per Kg.Chicken which was once considered as royal food is now food of poor,it is even cheaper than Paneer which is now cost Rs. 200 per kg or more.

The question is why Goat meat is now double the price of Chicken? because there is still no large scale factory farming of Goats ,Goats are still raised by poor as they used raise them 20 years back on the other hand mushrooming of Poultry farms is the only reason price of eggs and Chicken is still available at affordable cost
 

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