Will we be able one day in France to raise the issue of animal suffering in connection with ritual slaughter without provoking strong passions and futile polemics? The recent experience lived by the journalist Hugo Clément makes it possible to doubt it. His tweet denouncing ritual slaughter without stunning as “a cruel practice” inflicted on animals has, in fact, earned him an avalanche of death threats and hate speech on social networks.
Don’t get us wrong, it’s not necessarily about agreeing with the host who has made animal defense his specialty. We have every right, for religious or political reasons, to have another position, but prohibiting debate in a country that claims to be democratic is a real problem.
However, today, faced with the controversy that the subject systematically arouses, politicians lower their eyes and remain silent. And religious Jews or Muslims ready to think about the question or to consider alternative practices are reluctant to take a position outside of a few very informed circles. For a time, we had hoped that the decision, in December 2020, of the Court of Justice of the European Union would allow a more peaceful discussion. The court had, in fact, considered that imposing prior stunning in the name of animal suffering was not contrary to freedom of worship. And, thus, proved wrong to the religious Jews and Moslems opposed to the slightest change. But the Hugo Clément affair shows that the time for debate has not yet come.
