Jewish Social Studies

Jewish Social Studies 10.1 (2003) 117-150

The Politics of Beef:
Animal Advocacy and the Kosher Butchering Debates in Germany

Robin Judd

During the 1880s and early 1890s, animal-protection, veterinarian, and antisemitic societies in Saxony, and in much of Germany, lobbied for slaughterhouse reforms. They sought the licensing of slaughterers, the restriction of the abattoir (slaughterhouse) to men only, the implementation of stricter inspection procedures, and the stunning of animals into a state of unconsciousness before their slaughter. These groups called for change because they believed that the current state of affairs in the municipally run slaughterhouses posed a risk to the public's health. In their view, the abattoir allegedly encouraged brutal behavior, attracted unsavory characters as employees, and facilitated the accumulation of contaminants from its dirty and bloody surfaces. Saxon animal protectionists also expressed concern with the traditional ways in which animals were slaughtered for food. At that time, most European butchers slaughtered conscious animals with sharp knives (Schächten), and animal protection advocates warned that such a method cruelly allowed animals to feel their own murder. The activists admonished that the slaughter of conscious animals could affect people's behavior toward one another and lead to domestic violence, verbal abuse, and drunken scuffles. By making these demands, the animal protectionists and their supporters gradually raised questions concerning the character of German citizenry, the power of the German government, and the place of minority communities and institutions in the modern state. [End Page 117]

In 1892, the Kingdom of Saxony acquiesced to the animal protectionists and promulgated reforms that mandated the promulgation of stricter inspection procedures, the licensing of slaughterers, the restriction of the abattoir to men only, and the stunning of animals into a state of unconsciousness before their slaughter. ¹ Even though these slaughterhouse reforms did not necessarily target Saxon Jews, they influenced Jewish life significantly. Shehitah (kosher butchering), a subset of Judaism's dietary laws, dictates that a conscious animal must be slaughtered by rapidly severing its trachea and esophagus with an extremely smooth knife. Because the government refused to exempt the Jewish community from its regulations despite several appeals, the passage of the abattoir reforms forced religiously observant Jews to make a choice— transgress Jewish law by stunning the animal before its slaughter, slaughter meat illegally, or procure kosher meat from another source. ² The Saxon legislation remained unchanged until 1910, when the minister of the interior deemed that certain exemptions be put into place. ³

Although Saxony was the only state in Imperial Germany to allow a statewide ban on kosher butchering, the events there were not unique. During the 1890s and early 1900s, many German towns and states engaged in some form of debate concerning animal stunning and the Jewish method of animal slaughter (Schächtfrage), regardless of the size of their Jewish population. ⁴ In almost all cases, the debates about kosher butchering began as part of a larger campaign for slaughterhouse reform. The nascent efforts by animal protectionists and their supporters to cast these laws as mandatory for all citizens, and the subsequent attempt by Jewish communities to receive exemptions, intensified the animal protection campaigns and brought them to the attention of a wider audience. By the late 1890s, the mainstream animal advocacy crusade—which had once expressed little interest in Jewish rites—now raised questions concerning the character of Jewish rituals, the rights of religious minorities, and the possibilities for state or local control over religious customs and, by extension, religious minorities.

Nothing has yet been written to set out the narrative of the late- nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century German debates concerning kosher butchering, and, I believe, the Schächtfrage deserves examination and studies of its own. ⁵ This article uses the local, regional, and national debates to provide a window into a fragmented German society, state, and its minorities and to illuminate the complex processes of cultural, social, and political interaction that took place among them. The contradictory demands by animal protectionists concerning what regulations Jews should observe within the abattoir...