Abstract: In the current study, a detailed analysis of legal restrictions on ritualistic animal slaughter, or shechita, in various comparative settings is undertaken. The chapter deals with the historical and present debate on this phenomenon, very controversial both in Europe and beyond Europe since the 1990s. Analyses establish that civil society campaigns for the ban on shechita, supported by medical and veterinary authorities and activists on social media, have been effective in some, but not all, countries. The chapter will have two main aims. First, to document the historical bias against ritual animal slaughter, starting inmedieval times and culminating in 19th and 20th century European anti-Semitism, and to show the reemergence of this bias in recent decades. This reemergence, it will be shown, combines classic anti-Semitism with more recent Islamophobia (from the Right), and animal rights and anti-religious progressivism (from the Left). Second, to suggest that constitutional doctrines grounded in anti-discrimination principles are more effective than the doctrine of proportionality in protecting the religious and cultural rights of the Jewish minority in the context of shechita. This is because they are better equipped to expose hidden biases and prejudices against Jews than their proportionality-based counterparts.
