A proposal bill to ban shechita, the Jewish kosher slaughter of animals, in Holland, was rejected late Tuesday by the Dutch Senate, the upper house of the Parliament, on the ground that it violates freedom of religion.
Jewish organizations as well as Muslim groups, which had urged the Dutch not to ban ritual slaughter, reacted with relief to the vote.
The bill, which had been presented by MP Marianne Thieme of the small Animal Rights Party earlier this year, called for a total ban of slaughter without prior stunning of the animal.
In June, the lower house of the Dutch parliament voted in favor of a prohibition, but since then several political parties changed their stance on the matter, including the Socialist and Liberal parties, the largest groups in the Senate.
On Tuesday, Dutch Deputy Minister for Agriculture and Environment Henk Bleker presented a compromise proposal which calls for agreements with slaughterhouses and the Islamic and Jewish communities over permissible slaughter practices in order to improve the welfare of the slaughtered animals.
Ronnie Eisenmann, chairman of the Jewish Community of Amsterdam, said Jews are relieved "that the Senate wants us to look at improving animal welfare but that it didn’t support the proposed bill."
"We share the concern for animal welfare and in that sense we have respect for the efforts of Marianne Thieme. Our invitation to her to discuss the possibilities remains. A categorical rejection of the Jewish ritual slaughter is contrary to freedom of religion, as she herself acknowledges," he said.
World Jewish Congress President Ronald S.Lauder also welcomed the Senate’s rejection of a ban and welcomed the minister’s proposal which aims to find a solution to the question of ritual slaughter acceptable to the local Jewish and Muslim communities.
"This is good news, and we hope that an acceptable arrangement can be found that safeguards the right of the Jewish community to practice kosher slaughter," he said in a statement.
Lauder added: “We are grateful that kosher slaughter of animals, which has been continuously practiced by Jews for thousands of years and which is – contrary to the views of some activists – not a cruel practice, is now unlikely to be prohibited in the Netherlands. This is a victory of reason and religious freedom over political zeal.”
Earlier this week, a group of leading US congressmen and women from both the Republican and Democratic parties had made an appeal to the Dutch Senate to block the ban proposal.
In a letter to Godefridus de Graaf, Senate president, California Congressman Henry Waxman, New York Congresswoman Carolyn B Maloney, and eight others, declared that they were "troubled" by the possibility of a prohibition.
"A ban on ritual slaughter would unnecessarily restrict the religious freedom of one million Jews and 50,000 Jews in the Netherlands," they said.
Noting that the US humane society considers the shechita method to be as humane as other methods, they said banning it would contravene the principles of religious liberty guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Holland is a signatory.