(Politico) Belgian bans on the ritual slaughter of animals practiced by Jews and Muslims risk painting these minorities as “medieval” communities with no respect for animal life, the EU’s top official tasked with fighting anti-Semitism across Europe said.
Since 2019, citing concerns about animal welfare, the Belgian regions of Flanders and Wallonia have outlawed the killing of animals without pre-stunning, practiced by religious Jews and Muslims to ensure they can eat ritually pure kosher or halal meat.
“The discussion itself puts the Jews and also the Muslims in this case into a corner of ‘you do harm to animals, or you are medieval,’” said Katharina von Schnurbein, during an interview with POLITICO on Wednesday, at the European Jewish Community Center in Brussels.
