After seeing an agricultural scientist shove his arm into a fistulated cow, Marianne Thieme went vegan and founded Party for the Animals, a Dutch political party devoted to advancing animal welfare. They won two seats in Dutch parliament, which is now on the verge of passing Party for the Animals’ law to rescind the legal exemption allowing Jews and Muslims to kill animals for food without stunning them first. Vegans have often said that Kosher and Halal slaughter methods are worse because animals prefer to be knocked unconscious before they die. William Wallace animals aren’t.
In her defense of the law, Thieme hinted at the vegan trope that animal rights is the natural conclusion of the ever-expanding march for equality:
“Here in our society we no longer accept that animals must suffer,” says Ms Thieme. Religious groups have often opposed progressive social change, she adds. “We saw the same thing with women’s rights.”
The animals are justifiably a little pissed that Thieme didn’t just ban slaughter altogether, but hopefully they’ll understand that these things take time.
An interesting implication of this law, which the meat-eating supporters of it might be overlooking, is that if it should be illegal to kill an animal for food without stunning the animal first, then hunting ought to be illegal too.
Of course many meat eaters find hunting to be barbaric, so maybe they won’t mind if that eventually has to go too.
