LogFAQs > #905428717

Zeus posted...

Austria by far, given its numerous contributions to culture.

streamofthesky posted...

They certainly did so this week, after Jewish organizations criticized the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FP), the ruling coalition party in the state of Lower Austria, over pursuing a proposal that would require Jews to register with the government if they seek to purchase kosher meat. The same rules would apply to Muslims.

That's just bizarre.

https://www.thelocal.at/20180720/austrian-official-proposes-ritual-animal-slaughter-controls

The law provides that having such meat is only for those who show they belong to a religious community and need it, the cabinet minister in the state of Lower Austria told the paper.

Waldhusl has said he wants to reduce the practice of slaughtering animals without first stunning them, citing animal rights.

Oh, it's an animal welfare thing. That's actually understandable, given that it protects a religious exemption from animal cruelty laws. Further, the WaPo article has this interesting tidbit:

This law proposal dates back to 2017, when it was drafted by the Social Democrat during his last days in office, Alexander Murlasits, an FP spokesman, told The Washington Post on Thursday.

First off, the FPO spokesman's lying. Here's a commenter from the article, saves me the trouble:

What the FP spokesman is saying here is a blatant lie. Austrian welfare laws specifically mention exceptions for religious use. Slaughtering animals in a kosher way and humanely is not straight forward, hence the government has a list of people who are qualified to do it. This is what the social democrat politician was talking about. Of course the FP in their usual combination of xenophobia and incompetence had to pervert this common sense regulation for their own purposes.

The FP has recently put a lot of PR efforts into distancing themselves from their Nazi roots so I suspect that they were not necessarily trying to target observant Jews but muslims. Luckily, like many far right parties, the FP combines xenophobia with complete incompetence.

And take note, this isn't some regulation on the kosher/halal butchers, or making them register. This is a proposal to make the customers register with the government to buy the meat. Cause that needs to be tracked by the government for...reasons. And it only applies to Jews and Muslims. Christian, Atheist, or any other person who happens to like buying kosher/halal meat, per the proposal, does not have to register. It only applies to those two groups.
It's straight out of the nazi play book.

Thankfully the EU will shut this down if the rest of the Austrian government fails to, but fuck Austria.