The bill requires all animals to be stunned before slaughter, even if that slaughter is done following religious dictates that ban stunning.
Editied at 11:18 pm CDT.
The bill still has to pass the Dutch senate to become law.
European shechita advocates tried to use a quote from Dr. Temple Grandin to support the idea that shechita is humane and that animals killed this way do not suffer.
Indeed, they brought Joe Regenstein, a close associate of Grandin's and the head of Cornell University's Kosher and Halal Food Science program to Holland to work on blocking the ban.
But Grandin holds that "good" shechita – and by that she means shechita with proper animal handling and proper handling by the shochet that is graded excellent in an audit done by Grandin oe by approved auditors – is humane and as good as any other type of slaughter.
But no European slaughterhouse doing ritual slaughter is ranked as excellent by Grandin – meaning no Jewish ritual slaughter in Europe is as good a pre-stunned slaughter.
I confirmed this with Regenstein last week.
And this means Jewish pro-shechita advocates are misrepresenting Grandin's position – or lying.
Chief among those who are lying is Shechita UK's Shimon Cohen and the Conference of European Rabbis. The Chabad rabbinic group, the Rabbinical Council of Europe, tends to state shechita is humane but approaches the issue primarily as one of antisemitism.
The point is that Europe's rabbis and pro-shechita activists relied primarily on screaming antisemitism and misusing Grandin to make their case, rather than cleaning up the problems at their slaughterhouses – or pointing out where those problems are out of their control and lie with the slaughterhouse management.
I told Regenstein that the only thing that would stop these people from lying and force them to clean up shechita would be a ban.
He disagreed, not because that contention is wrong, but because he believes the ban is based on anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish sentiment, rather than animal welfare.
The point is, rabbis and Orthodox activists have again chosen to play the antisemitism card rather than fixing real problems.
In this case, those real problems for the most part can be easily and inexpensively fixed.
That's what Dutch Jewish lay leaders tried to do. But they waited too long.
That people like Shechita UK's Cohen chose not to be honest may turn out to hurt many Jews.
And those Jews should know who to blame, and it isn't the antisemites Cohen and his ilk think are lurking around every corner.