Why Europeans Find Blaming the Jews Easier than Giving Up Meat

Like many people who have browsed online videos about the reality of the meat industry, I was shocked, disheartened, and disoriented by what I saw. The vile treatment inflicted on animals in slaughterhouses, not just during the slaughter but before and after, along with the flouting of basic rules of decency and hygiene, grieved my heart.

Yet there is no doubt in my mind that, as Eric Mechoulan contends in his thought-provoking essay, the arguments being made in Europe against ritual slaughter are not directed at these very real problems. The effort to ban ritual slaughter, whether of the kosher or the halal variety, is based on the preposterous belief that inflicting death can ever be painless or clean. In truth, European societies prefer to accuse Jews and Muslims of animal cruelty than to look to their own failures—failures that, to be fair, the religious meat market is guilty of exploiting.

Killing an animal is a gruesome, heartbreaking act in itself, regardless of the method. And as Mechoulan makes clear, stunning—the favored technique for making slaughter more humane, which violates the laws of kashrut—in no way solves the problem, and introduces cruelties of its own.