A version of the essay below appeared
in the Dutch-language daily newspaper De
Volkskrant on June 16. For months, the Dutch
parliament has debated a bill that would ban
kosher slaughter on supposed humanitarian grounds.
On June 23, parliament offered a compromise
according to which the Jewish community will have
a chance to demonstrate that this 3,000-year-old
practice does not cause animals to suffer. Given
that kosher slaughter is mandated in order to
prevent animal suffering, the entire proceeding is
grotesque. This might seem like an esoteric issue
affecting a small religious minority; on the
contrary, I argue, it is on just such questions
that the moral survival of the West depends -
Spengler.
For the first time in
Western history, the physical as well as emotional
pain felt by animals became a human concern three
millennia ago in the Jewish
Scriptures. Not only does the Hebrew Bible
prohibit meat obtained by hunting - the least
humane way of killing animals - but it forbids the
owner of an ox from muzzling the beast while it
threshes grain, or killing a calf in the presence
of the mother cow.
The sanctity of all
life, animal as well as human, informs all of
Jewish religious law, including the painless
killing of animals through kosher slaughter. The
biblical heritage of the West is the well from
which we draw our modern concept of the sanctity
of life. Holland's Party of the Animals now
proposes to poison this well.
Jewish
standards for humane treatment of animals are far
more restrictive than those of the Netherlands, or
indeed of any country in the world. There is no
bill presently before the Dutch parliament to ban
consumption of wild game, which is killed in the
hunt by methods that often inflict considerable
suffering. Nonetheless, there is a bill to ban
kosher slaughter, which was designed from the
outset to inflict the minimum of pain.
Evidence is overwhelming that kosher
slaughter is just as humane as any modern method
of killing animals, and more humane as a matter of
practice. The standard method in today's
slaughterhouses - shooting a bolt into the
animal's forehead - has a high failure rate, and
animals frequently are shot several times before
losing consciousness.
Temple Grandin,
America's foremost expert on humane treatment of
cattle, published the definitive study on the
subject in the May 2006 issue of the journal
Anthropology of Food. Professor Grandin was the
subject of an eponymous 2010 feature film.
Observing the slaughter of animals by a
trained Jewish specialist, she reported: "I was
relieved and surprised to discover that the
animals don't even feel the super-sharp place as
it touches their skin. They made no attempt to
pull away. I felt peaceful and calm." More skill
is required for humane slaughter without stunning,
Grandin observes, but Jewish religious law
requires special implements and a very high level
of skill. Muslim halal slaughter, according
to Grandin, has no such safeguards.
But
all this is well known, and has little to do with
present proposals to prohibit kosher practices in
Holland, where a single schochet slaughters
a couple of thousand animals a year - against
perhaps 400 million killed by a bolt in the brain
delivered by a semi-skilled slaughterhouse worker
who often must repeat the procedure on a suffering
animal.
It is yet another blow against the
tiny remnant of once-great observant Jewish
community whose association with Dutch liberty and
national prowess goes back half a millennium, to
the arrival of refugees from the Spanish and
Portuguese Jewish communities at the turn of the
16th century.
Three-quarters of Dutch Jews
died in the Holocaust, a higher proportion than in
any country except Poland. To harry the tiny
observant remnant appears obscene. But the broader
issue at stake is not the survival of Dutch Jewry,
but whether the West has the moral resources to
survive.
Kashrut (Jewish dietary
laws) sanctifies life as a matter of daily
practice. For observant Jews, the notion that all
life testifies to its creator is not an
abstraction, not a philosophical argument, but a
mode of living that orders the most basic of human
functions, including nutrition. The Jewish people
thus are a living link to man's first
comprehension of the sanctity of life.
As
the American Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod
explains, the Book of Genesis tells us that even
if the animals are not as close to God as are we,
neither are they so far from him. To kill and eat
them is a grave matter; we have no rational
calculus by which to weigh the human requirement
for nutrition against the trace of the divine in
animal life. That is why Jews may consume meat
only with supernatural sanction, under
restrictions imposed by God himself, with a sense
of awe at the God who rules over life and death.
Those who reject religious arguments - as
do the majority of today's Europeans - should
nonetheless ask by what measure they gauge the
value of animal suffering. Jews observe the
ancient dietary laws because they believe that God
asked them to do so. Whether or not the Hebrew
Bible was given to Moses on Mount Sinai by God,
the rules it set forth for kindness towards
animals had no precedent in human affairs. And the
influence upon ethics of this innovation cannot be
overstated. If we must respect animal life - not
only physical suffering, but even the emotional
sensibility of animals - then we must respect
human life and dignity all the more.
What
is the alternative to the biblical argument? The
intellectual leader of the animal rights movement,
Peter Singer of Princeton University, argues that
a healthy piglet has more right to life than a
deformed human infant. Dutch voters should ask
themselves whether they really wish to exchange
the biblical concept of sanctity of life for
Singer's monstrous utilitarianism. Precisely
because the Western concept of sanctity of life
derives from the Hebrew bible, observant Jewish
communities form an irreplaceable link in the
cultural DNA of the West, and to suppress their
most essential practices would be an act of
cultural suicide.
It would be a bitter
irony indeed if the Netherlands, which first
established religious freedom in the modern world,
were to destroy Jewish life within its borders by
prohibiting Jews from sanctifying life through
kashrut - all in the specious pursuit of
animal welfare.
[Bans on kosher slaughter
are in place in Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and
Sweden. In 2010, New Zealand followed on supposed
humanitarian grounds, but the ruling was partially
reversed when the country's High Court heard
evidence that the Agriculture Minister, David
Carter, owned shares in companies that exported
lamb to Muslim countries, and was told that
banning kosher slaughter of lamb would be good for
his investments. The ban on kosher slaughter of
poultry was suspended and a ban on beef is still
in effect.
New Zealand not only permits
hunting, but sponsors a thriving hunting business
for tourists based in its 14 national parks and 20
forest parks. It also has private hunting
preserves that cater to tourists seeking so-called
trophy kills. No effort has been made to impede
killing of animals by bullets, which often causes
great suffering].
Spengler is channeled
by David P Goldman. Comment on this article
in Spengler's Expat Bar forum.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
