French Court Rejects Mandatory Labeling for Halal and Kosher Meats

On Friday, July 1, 2022, the Council of State rejected the request of the Association for Assistance to Slaughterhouse Animals (OABA) which, in February 2020, had demanded that the French state take measures to ensure "perfect traceability" of meats from halal and kosher slaughter, in order to ensure transparency for consumers, reports SaphirNews. As the French government did not respond to its request, OABA brought the matter before the Council of State in June 2020, but did not prevail.

The provisions of the Rural and Maritime Fisheries Code were enacted "with the aim of reconciling, in compliance with the principle of secularism which requires the Republic to guarantee the free exercise of religions, the objectives of health police and the equal respect of religious beliefs and traditions, in order to ensure, by authorizing on an exceptional basis the practice of ritual slaughter by killing the animal without stunning, the effective respect of the freedom of religion guaranteed by the provisions of Article 9 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms," explained the highest administrative court.

According to it, no regulatory provision currently requires the state "to make mandatory traceability measures, in particular by labeling, in order to guarantee to certain final consumers that they are not consuming meats or meat products from slaughters carried out without stunning." In addition, "the OABA association, which does not claim any religious conviction based on the prohibition of the consumption of meats or meat products from slaughters carried out without stunning, cannot usefully invoke the principle of secularism to request the annulment of the decision it is attacking," adds the Council of State.

On Monday, OABA reacted to the decision of the jurisdiction, which it describes as "particularly disappointing, even scandalous." "The highest administrative court in France thus allows the meat industry to continue to deceive consumers by discreetly returning to the conventional distribution circuit the surplus of halal and kosher meats that have not found buyers on the confessional market," the association estimates. Dissatisfied, it intends to challenge the Council of State’s decision before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) "by invoking the violation of the freedom of conscience of consumers."