The Dutch parliament has voted to ban the ritual method of animal slaughter used by both Muslims and Jews on 
the grounds that it is cruel to animals.
Representatives of both Dutch Muslims and Jews have condemned the prohibition of halal and kosher meat produced in Holland as a violation of their religious freedom.
Binyomin Jacobs, the country’s Chief Rabbi, has compared the ban to anti-Semitic laws enacted by during the Nazi occupation that led to the death of 104,000 Dutch Jews in the Holocaust.
“One of the first measures taken during the occupation was the closing of kosher abattoirs,” he said.
“The very fact that there is a discussion about this is very painful for the Jewish community. Those who survived the war remember the very first law made by the Germans in Holland was the banning of the Jewish way of slaughtering animals.”
The legislation was tabled by the tiny Animal Rights Party which has only two members in the Dutch Parliament.
However it won cross-party support in a country where traditional religion, especially Islam, has been accused of being out of step with liberal Dutch values.
“This way of killing causes unnecessary pain to animals. Religious freedom cannot be unlimited,” said Marianne Thieme, the party’s leader.”For us religious freedom stops where human or animal suffering begins.”
The new ban requires that livestock must be stunned before being killed, contrary to the Muslim and Jewish “ritual slaughter” customs that require animals to be fully conscious.
Dutch Muslims have also complained they feel stigmatised, amid growing support for Geert Wilders, the anti-Islamist populist, whose Freedom Party has supported the ban.
“There was no reason for passing this law,” said Imam Mahmut of the El Tawheed mosque told Reuters.
“This is a political decision. Who has the authority to determine whether the way of killing animals is good or not?”
Sweden, Luxembourg and non-EU members Norway and Switzerland ban ritual slaughter but the EU, which bans the killing of non-stunned animals, allows religious exemptions.
Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s Chief Rabbi, joined the campaign to stop the ban last week amid Jewish fears that pressure to ban ritual slaughter is growing across the EU.
“We are worried that it could spread. There has been a non-stop campaign by animal welfare activists to have all forms of ritual slaughter banned. It has to be fought everywhere because if it’s lost anywhere it has a potential domino effect,” he said.
Rabbi Yitschok Huisman, a prominent Jewish leader in Amsterdam, said that Jews and Muslims were “in the same boat” when it comes to the ban.
“At this point, the step was mainly meant to hurt the Muslims,” he said.
While the Jewish community in Holland has devised ways to bypass the bill, there is fear that the kosher practice will soon be banned all across Europe.
“Right now it’s a big problem for us, because we can slaughter meat according to the halacha outside of Holland, but there are concerns that all of Europe will follow suit with the kosher slaughter ban, and that the next step will ban the import of kosher meat into the country,” Huisman said.
There are those whose livelihood has been threatened by the slaughter ban. Sami Bar-On, who left Israel 32 years ago, owns two restaurants and a grocery store in Amsterdam, all of which carry kosher meat.
Before the passage of the bill, he said: “The Jewish community isn’t going to give up, and if the law is passed in the upper house as well, they will turn to the European Court. I don’t believe that the bill will pass. If Europe is a union, they cannot say ‘yes’ in one place and ‘no’ in another.”