The Jewish and Muslim methods involve the killing of the animal with a single cut to the neck.

As per The New York Times report, laws across Europe and European Union regulations require that animals be rendered insensible to pain before slaughter, to make the process more humane. For larger animals, stunning before slaughter usually means using a “captive bolt” device that fires a metal rod into the brain; for poultry it usually means an electric shock. Animals can also be knocked out with gas.

The law in Belgium which came to effect on Tuesday is applied in the northern Belgian region of Flanders.

A similar one will later be effective in southern region of Wallonia this year.

Religious minorities in the nation have objected to the move and they have rallied against the new law and are challenging it in Belgium’s Constitutional Court.

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the president of the Conference of European Rabbis, lamented the kosher slaughter ban, calling it a “sad day for religious freedom in Europe”, as reported by Israel National News.

"We are in the midst of an attack on the freedom of religion. The European capital has, with its laws and lack of tolerance for minorities, proven that radical Islam has won. We managed to block many [similar pieces] of legislation in other country in Europe and attempts to pass bills in the European parliament and initiatives in the the EU's agencies," he told the newspaper.

“Today is the last day, on which kosher meat and poultry can be prepared in Belgium for the Jewish communities of Antwerp and Brussels. A sad day for the Jews of Europe, a sad day for religious freedom in Europe," he said

Yaakov David Schmahl, a senior rabbi in Antwerp told The New York Times: " It is impossible to know the true intentions of people."

“Unless people state clearly what they have in mind, but most anti-Semites don’t do that,"  Yaakov David Schmahl said.

However, animal rights activists have appreciated the move.

Ann De Greef, director of Global Action in the Interest of Animals, told RT that in Belgium “the law is above religion.” 

"They want to keep living in the Middle Ages and continue to slaughter without stunning – as the technique didn’t yet exist back then – without having to answer to the law,” she said to the New York Times. “Well, I’m sorry, in Belgium the law is above religion and that will stay like that," he said.

image: RSPCA Australia