New Danish legislation regulating ritual slaughter in the country, unveiled this week, contradicts European laws that ensure the right of religious groups to perform ritual slaughtering, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy Tonio Borg told a Jewish leader during a meeting in Brussels on Thursday.
The Commissioner told Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who heads the European Jewish Association (EJA), that he intends to ask the Danish Government to provide clarifications in the matter.
Following the signing of a bill to regulate ritual slaughter by Danish Agriculture and Food Minister Dan Joergensen, which would effectively ban the practice of slaughter of animals without prior stunning, Rabbi Margolin called upon Danish and EU leaders to help and reverse this new development.
Slaughter without prior stunning is a requirement for kosher certification of meat.
"It has been proven scientifically that kosher slaughtering does not allow the animal to feel pain,” the rabbi told Commissioner Borg, adding that it "does not inflict more pain to animals than other methods commonly used in Europe".
In a letter sent to the Danish Ambassador to the EU, the country's Prime minister, and Speakers of their parliament, Rabbi Margolin stressed the strong reaction from global Jewry to this latest attack on Jewish welfare and freedom of religion.
"Kosher butchering is essential for the continuation of Jewish life and its ban hurts Jews not only in Denmark, but in other places across Europe that import kosher meat from there," he added.
He vowed that the EJA ‘’will fight against this injustice vigorously’, just as it has against similar decrees against freedom of religion such as the proposed ban on circumcision in Norway and the ban on kosher slaughtering in Poland.