A text, proposing the stunning of animals before they were killed, was rejected after having divided the regional government, the parties and the opinion.
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Divided parties and sometimes renouncing their principles, a threatened regional government, a frontal shock between religious and secular principles, a heady perfume of electoralism: this is what will remain of an intense debate on slaughter Ritual of animals that took place in Brussels-Capital, third Belgian region. A proposal of the independent Federalist Centrist Party (challenge), supported by environmentalists and Flemish liberals, who Fire in the powder in October 2021 resulted, Friday, June 17, to a very tight vote – 42 against the stunning of animals before they were killed, 38 for, 6 abstentions. A conclusion, undoubtedly provisional, which will not calm the spirits.
The text, originally, aimed to harmonize the legislation of the region with that already in force in Flanders and Wallonia. The question of animal welfare, put in particular in front by the professional veterinary union, which underlined that a slaughtered animal can dye up to fourteen minutes, was however quickly overshadowed in favor of political and religious considerations.
Weight of the “community phenomenon”
If the animal defense association gaia had deposited a petition with 70,000 signatures in favor of stunning, a text in the opposite direction had collected 110,000 signatures aimed at protecting the practice of the Shehita of the Jewish religion and the Dhakât for Muslims. Practices that escape the obligation to induce the priority of the slaughter decreed by European rules, and that the other two Belgian regions had prohibited in 2019, despite the appeals of Muslim and Jewish organizations invoking respect for the freedom of cults.
The Belgian Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union had, at the time, not granted their arguments, believing that a prohibition of slaughter without stunning would violate either the separation between State and cults or freedom of belief.
Over the months, many subjects have enamelled the debates of the regional parliament. Economic, with the question of maintaining employment in the slaughterhouses of the region and the fact that, if the ritual slaughter was prohibited, the communities concerned are supplied abroad. Scientist, with the search for alternatives which would allow both to reduce animal suffering and to respect religious precepts. Philosophical, with the evocation, by certain elected officials, of taking into account the animal as being sensitive, a subject which should also be at the heart of the “code of good conduct” for animal welfare that the government regional is supposed to define soon.
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