Oxford Students Are Trying To Ban Kosher And Halal Meat
Image by iStock
At Somerville College in Oxford, the Junior Common Room, a student representative group, passed a motion to ban meat that was not stunned before slaughter. As Jewish law forbids the use of stunning, and it has been the subject of contentious debate among halal-eaters, this has been perceived as a ban on kosher and halal foods.
Nicole Jacobus, president of the university’s Jewish Society, said that that “the very fact that this amendment was passed in a JCR meeting without a Jewish student being able to challenge it highlights the lack of diversity and awareness of other cultures amongst students in Oxford.”
“We currently offer a kosher meal for guest nights (formal dinners) which we order in from an external kosher kitchen,” Jeevan Vasagar, Communications Manager for Somerville College, told the Forward. “Expanding the provision would mean offering that same facility for routine college meals, but the students would have to book this option in advance.” This isn’t Somerville’s first time making headlines for its menus. In the past, college principal Baroness Janet Royall banned octopus tartine from the freshmen’s welcome dinner, stating that she was “determined to move fast on widening access to Somerville.”
A debate on the ethics of kosher slaughter is raging through Europe as countries like Belgium, Sweden and Slovenia move to ban ritual slaughter, and as Poland has proposed legislation against un-stunned slaughter.
Shira Feder is a writer. She’s at xirafeder@gmail.com and @shirafeder
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
