Kosher Slaughter (Shechita)

Jews affirm that permitted mammals and birds are lawful to eat only if slaughtered by shechita: a swift, uninterrupted cut across the throat with a flawless, razor-sharp blade, performed by a trained and pious slaughterer (the shochet). The rules derive from the Torah's command to slaughter as commanded (Deuteronomy 12:21) as elaborated in the oral tradition, and include inspection of the animal afterward for defects that would render it unfit (treifah) and the removal of forbidden blood and fats. A shochet trains for years under a master and must be examined and licensed (kabbalah) by rabbinic authority before slaughtering professionally; the Talmud (Chullin, chapter 3) enumerates categories of internal and physical defects, traditionally counted as eighteen, that render an animal treif, unfit, regardless of how the cut itself was performed.

Because Jewish law requires the animal to be whole and uninjured at the moment of the cut, shechita is performed without prior stunning, a point that has put it in direct conflict with animal-welfare law in several European countries: Sweden banned unstunned slaughter in 1937, and Belgium's Flemish and Walloon regions did so by decree in 2017, prompting legal challenges from Jewish and Muslim communities that the European Court of Justice rejected in a December 2020 ruling (Case C-336/19) upholding the bans. Where such bans apply, observant communities import kosher meat rather than compromise on the method.