The prohibition in countries such as Belgium on the slaughter of livestock without prior stunning, for the sake of animal welfare, does not represent a restriction on religious freedom.
Nor does it constitute discrimination against the Muslim and Jewish religions that prescribe such rituals
(halal
and
kosher,
respectively) for the consumption of meat, as determined this Tuesday by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
It is a pioneering ruling, since it links religious freedom with animal welfare for the first time.
In a unanimous decision, the Strasbourg judges consider that this prohibition does not constitute a violation of article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights on freedom of thought, conscience and religion, nor of article 14 (prohibition of discrimination).
The most unprecedented thing about the ruling is in its reasoning regarding the link between religious freedom and animal rights: the magistrates recognize that article 9 does not contain an explicit reference to the protection of animal welfare, since the only restrictions on The religious freedom provided for in the legal text are related to “public safety, the protection of public order, health or morals, or the protection of the rights or freedoms of others.”
However, it is argued that the protection of public morality, which is explicit in the law, cannot be interpreted exclusively as protecting “human dignity” in the sphere of interpersonal relationships.
Furthermore, the court points out that the concept of “morality” is “evolutionary by essence” and that what at a certain time was considered morally acceptable “may cease to be so after a time.”
In this regard, he cites a preliminary ruling on the same case from the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in 2020, in which it was already established that “animal welfare, as a value to which contemporary democratic societies have been attributing increasing importance since several years ago, can be taken into account to a greater extent in the field of ritual sacrifice, in view of the evolution of society, and thus contribute to justifying the proportionate nature of a regulation.
For all these reasons, the judges of the ECtHR conclude that "the protection of animal welfare can be linked to the notion of public morality in the sense of Article 9 of the Convention", reasoning that leads them, therefore, to consider that said animal welfare can be sufficient reason to restrict religious freedom.
“The national authorities have not exceeded the margin of appreciation available to them and have taken a measure that is justified in principle and that can be considered proportionate to the aim sought: the protection of animal welfare as an element of 'public morality',” they decree. .
With their ruling, the Strasbourg judges thus agree with the Belgian regions of Flanders and Wallonia, which in 2017 and 2018, respectively, prohibited animal slaughter without stunning, using a 1986 animal welfare law to do so. Until then , an exception to this prohibition existed for “sacrifices prescribed by a religious rite.”
After exhausting national judicial avenues to revoke these decrees, 13 Belgian citizens and a dozen non-governmental organizations representing Muslim and Jewish interests went to the ECtHR alleging that the new regulations violated their right to religious freedom and discriminated against them.
But the magistrates have taken into account, in addition to the reasoning on the validity of animal welfare as an exception to the protection of religious freedoms, the fact that both the Walloon and Flemish parliaments provided for a “proportionate alternative” to the obligation of prior stunning. : The regulations indicate that if animals are to be sacrificed for a religious ritual that requires special methods, the stunning process can be “reversible”, that is, without causing the death of the animal, which would align this practice with religious precepts which establish that the animal must be conscious before its sacrifice.
The ECtHR has also rejected the argument of the plaintiffs who alleged that the prohibition of slaughtering animals without prior stunning makes it difficult for Muslim and Jewish communities to access meat obtained in accordance with their religious convictions.
In this sense, it points out that the regulations of the two federal regions do not prevent meat obtained according to religious rites from being imported from other regions (Brussels continues to allow it) or countries where these practices are allowed, such as in neighboring France and Germany, or in Spain.
In the European area, the ban on slaughtering animals without prior stunning applies, in addition to the two Belgian regions, in Slovenia, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway, as well as in Liechtenstein and Switzerland (except for chickens).
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