“Animal rights come before religion”
As the world’s anger rages in response to the senseless (and illegal) killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe by American dentist Walter James Palmer, an avid trophy hunter, Denmark takes a provocative step toward limiting religious freedoms and preventing what it terms animal cruelty.
Jewish and Muslim leaders have responded s
wiftly to the prohibition of the practice of ritual slaughter in the manner in which it is required under religious laws. That is, animals must be killed with a single blade slice through the throat. Denmark considers the method a practice that is cruel to animals and has banned it.
But the stage is set for the larger question. Is it right for humans to slaughter animals in any way? While outraged that Cecil was shot with a crossbow and tracked for forty hours before being killed by a gunshot, many in the world – at least those in so-called developed countries – list meat as a staple in their diets. And many, if not most of those people, remain adamantly ignorant of the conditions under which their meat has been raised. The Guardian’s Andrew Brown considers the ban an act of hypocrisy on the part of the Danish government, noting that it has been a decade since any animals in Denmark were killed without the use of a stun gun. And animal rights activists argue that stunning the animals before slaughtering them, considered a more humane way to kill them, is simply not consideration enough, especially when stunning fails and animals remain alive while further “processing” takes place.
Religious believers often argue that the world was created by their god in order that humanity be provided its every need. Even at our most recent meeting of Toronto Conference of the United Church, a delegate rose and reiterated that dated interpretation in opposition to a proposal that the UCC divest of fossil fuels. One would think that images of the earth as a tiny dot against the rings of Saturn and the recent photographic images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft would eradicate such thinking. It seems too convenien
t to privilege the archaic, religiously-based perspective, and through it, protect our voracious lifestyle. Perhaps what we should consider banning is not only the behaviour – slaughtering animals for ritual, trophy, or food – but the primitive religious beliefs that are too easily used to justify egregious acts against our only home, its vulnerable resources, and its exquisite inhabitants.
Source: Denmark Bans Kosher and Halal Animal Slaughter | TIME