OPINION - Philip Carmel: Marking Shechita is Marking Jews

If there were any doubts about where the proposal to label all shechita meat currently being debated within the institutions of the European Union might lead, there was no better evidence than a report last week that a major slaughterhouse in Ireland has decided to cease all kosher slaughter. The decision by the slaughterhouse sent shockwaves round the UK community, raising concerns that the supply of kosher meat to the large UK market would be reduced. The market place has a tried and trusted method when demand is maintained and supply reduced and that method is price hikes.

Let’s take that a stage further. In an economic recession – and in a market where kosher meat is already considerably more expensive than its non-kosher equivalent – that means the denial of the provision to the Jewish consumer of kosher meat. That is a very real threat. Many smaller Jewish communities in today’s Europe no longer have kosher butchers and Jews in these places have to buy imported kosher meat at non-Jewish supermarkets. Will these places still supply meat under the proposed legislation?

We are not just talking about the provision of kosher meat, but in many cases the very survival of Jewish communities. From the other end of the globe from the UK came these words from the presidents of the Wellington and Auckland communities in New Zealand, a country which recently banned Shechita. In an email to the Jews of New Zealand titled 'Save the Future of Judaism in New Zealand', Garth Cohen and Claire Massey wrote that the legislation would scupper any possibility of the community attracting rabbis and youth leaders. They went on: “It will mean our religious families will be forced to leave New Zealand. Few Jews will want to migrate here. We will be seen as a country where Jews are not welcome, and where our traditions and beliefs are not respected or valued.”

Argue as they might, EU legislators who want to force all non-stunned meat to carry special labeling are marking Jews. Sure, they will give the ability to animal welfare activists to avoid buying kosher meat, the same rights they will give to any anti-Israel boycotter or just your regular common or garden anti-Semite. Because marking Jewish meat is always marking Jews. Switzerland knew that at the end of the 19th century when it banned Shechita, knowing that it would prevent Jews immigrating to Switzerland. And Germany certainly knew it when it did the same in the 1930s.

European Jewish communities are not though against labelling of meat products. In fact, nobody labels food products better than Jews. We were doing it before the European Union even came into existence and we will continue to label our products as kosher, ensuring that the consumer knows exactly what he or she is purchasing.

What we do strongly object to is discriminatory labelling. If the European Union is so concerned that consumers should get all the gory details of how their meat is slaughtered, they might wish to explain the ins and outs of the gassing of pigs or the sardine-style battery hens. They might also wish to inform the consumer about the huge percentages of failed bolt stunning meaning that there are probably more non-stunned animals resulting from regular slaughtering methods than the miniscule proportion of animals slaughtered by shechita for the Jewish market.

At the beginning of 2011, representatives from the 27 member states of the European Union will gather at the EU Council of Ministers and they have the opportunity to send a loud and clear message to the continent’s Jews. Are Jews part of European society with freedom of religious expression as enshrined in the EU’s foundation charters, or are we not?

That is the message that we are conveying to every representative of every member state and one which we would strongly urge our brothers and sisters across the world to make to their local embassies of these countries. It’s very simple: putting details about the Jewish humane method of slaughter of animals for meat consumption on the label does not just discriminate against Shechita. It discriminates against Jews.

Philip Carmel is international relations director of the Conference of European Rabbis, an organization federating hundreds of Jewish religious leaders in over 40 European states, including all the continent’s chief rabbis.