Sikhs of the Khalsa affirm the prohibition of kutha, meat from an animal killed by the slow, ritual method of halal or kosher slaughter. Refraining from kutha is one of the four cardinal prohibitions (kurahits) binding on initiated Sikhs. The Rahit, the Khalsa code of conduct, forbids eating meat prepared in the Muslim or Jewish ritual manner, a rule often understood as a rejection of ritual killing and, historically, as a mark of Sikh distinctness from the surrounding communities.
The prohibition of kutha meat is codified in the Sikh Rahit Maryada, the official code of conduct adopted by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in 1945 after decades of consultation intended to standardize practice across the Sikh world, but its substance reaches back to the founding of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699, when the four kurahits were first established as binding on the newly initiated order; historians of Sikhism generally read the rule, alongside the other kurahits, as part of a deliberate effort to mark the Khalsa's members as a visibly distinct community, separated in everyday practice from both the Muslim and Hindu populations among whom Sikhs lived. The prohibition rests on a different textual layer than core Sikh theology: unlike teachings grounded directly in the Guru Granth Sahib itself, the kutha ban belongs to the Rahit, the code of conduct literature, a distinction some modern reform-minded Sikhs have invoked to question its binding status, against the mainstream Khalsa position that Guru Gobind Singh's own institution of the kurahits carries equivalent authority.