Balancing Religious Freedom and Animal Welfare: The Ethical Dilemma of Prior Stunning Laws.

Guest Post by Natalie Lock

In February, The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that laws requiring prior stunning of animals before they are slaughtered encroach on the religious freedom of Jewish and Muslim communities. However, the ECHR stated that the right to religious freedom is not absolute and can be overridden, if necessary, to protect the welfare of animals.  

By 2018, The Belgian provinces of Flanders and Wallonia passed laws mandating the prior stunning of animals before being slaughtered for human consumption. Jewish and Muslim communities applied to overturn this legislation, claiming that the law was a violation of their religious freedom. They appealed to the Belgian Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union but were unsuccessful, after which the applicants then turned to the ECHR. The court ruled that the freedom to exercise one's religion or beliefs can be subject to restriction if it threatens the interests and protection of public safety, order, health, morals, or the protection of the rights and freedom of others.  

On February 13th, the court ruled that laws requiring prior stunning do limit religious freedom, but protecting animal welfare is part of the government's legitimate objective to protect public morals. The court said that morality is an evolving notion and rejected the applicants’ argument that the protection of public morals is limited to protecting human dignity. The ECHR stated that public morals must be understood to include animal welfare and protection. The legislation was based on a scientific consensus that stunning animals before slaughter is the most humane method to reduce animal suffering during slaughter. The court asserted that the legislation is required to minimize the infringement of religious freedom as much as possible, concurrently meeting a high standard of animal welfare, and noted, in this regard, that the legislation did not prohibit the import and sale of meat slaughtered without prior stunning from sources outside the provinces.  

Peter Singer, writing for Project Syndicate, states that there is tension between protecting exercising the right of religious freedoms and upholding high standards of animal welfare, and it can be difficult to completely satisfy both. In his opinion, he suggests that the legislatures may have been too cautious in not prohibiting the sale of meat from animals killed without prior stunning, and questions whether a prohibition on slaughtering animals whilst they’re fully conscious is a violation of religious freedom. Singer suggests that religious practices could be adapted to accommodate ethical considerations regarding animal welfare. In Jewish religious beliefs, he claims, there are no dietary laws that require the consumption of meat. Hence prohibiting slaughter without prior stunning is not a restriction on religious freedom. The case is less clear for Muslims because there are some Muslims who believe that they are required to eat meat during Eid-al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice. Singer suggests that even if this argument is accepted, religious freedom could be protected by passing a law that permits the selling and consumption of meat only during the week of the Eid- al-Adha. This compromise would minimize infringements of religious freedom while maintaining the protection of animals. 

While this is a possible compromise, Singer himself would prefer that no animals were slaughtered without prior stunning. I agree that a compromise may be the most effective method, as negotiation usually encourages incremental change, but I question whether it is fair to push certain community groups to change their diets when the rest of the population is free to consume meat which, consequently, contributes to animal cruelty. Factory farming is the height of animal cruelty. Each time people buy animal products, they contribute to the mass maltreatment of factory-farmed animals. Unless people buy certified free-range products, their purchase supports subjecting animals to brutal conditions throughout their entire lives. They are kept in confined spaces, like cages and stalls - in which they can barely move, their most basic physiological, psychological and social needs are not met, and they never see the light of day, unless you count their trip to the abattoir, during which they are tightly packed on trucks like commodities On the day of slaughter, even the few fortunate animals who spend their lives freely roaming green pastures will experience pain and suffering as they meet their fate. Abattoirs are under pressure to kill as many animals as possible in the shortest amount of time, which means animals are subjected to barbaric treatment, they can be hit, kicked, aggressively restrained, have their legs broken and tails pulled, witness the death of their own kind, and experience distress and pain during their own slaughter. Therefore, is it fair to push certain groups to change their diets when the very thing we're trying to minimise, harm, is an inevitable outcome of the current factory farming practices, even when prior stunning is mandated?  

I agree that we should use any means possible to minimise harm, but what this dilemma reveals is that we must question the ethics of factory farming as well as the current practices used in abattoirs. While prior stunning does mitigate some harm, it is not fool-proof, and the overwhelming majority of animals who are raised in factory farms suffer throughout their entire lives. 

Natalie Lock, Bioethicist