The Finnish parliament’s constitutional law committee voted 10-5 on Wednesday to allow halal and shechita slaughter practiced by Muslims and Jews, respectively, according to Yle. The Parliament’s agriculture and forestry committee recently approved the amended animal welfare act.
Yaron Nadbornik, the head of the Jewish community of Helsinki, said that the law does not ban shechita and halal slaughter.
“This is what we hoped for in the new law,” he continued. “We didn’t want the law to ban shechita slaughter.”
In the new act, as in the current law, chickens will not have to be stunned, only large livestock like reindeer, lambs, and cows, according to Nadbornik.
Even if the animal is supposed to be stunned simultaneously with the cutting, it cannot happen simultaneously at the same time, which means it offers an opportunity to stun the animal immediately when initiating the cut.
Sweden banned stunning animals in 1937, Norway in 1929, and Denmark in 2014.