On this day in vegan history · May 10, 1979
Europe Signs a Promise to Spare Animals 'Unnecessary Suffering'
In a square concrete palace in Strasbourg, a handful of European governments put their names to the first cross-border rulebook for how a slaughterhouse is allowed to kill.
The facts
- Opened for signature
- 10 May 1979, Strasbourg, France
- Adopted by
- Council of Europe (treaty ETS No. 102)
- Entered into force
- 11 June 1982
- Ratification, as of May 2021
- 30 states signed, 26 ratified or acceded; the EU itself never ratified
On 10 May 1979 the Council of Europe opened the European Convention for the Protection of Animals for Slaughter for signature in Strasbourg, France. The treaty, formally ETS No. 102, set common minimum standards for the movement, handling, restraint, stunning, and killing of horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, rabbits, and poultry at slaughter. It did not ask anyone to stop killing animals for food. It asked, for the first time at a continental scale, that the killing be made less cruel, and it wrote a religious exemption into the same document that granted the protection. The convention entered into force on 11 June 1982, three years after it opened for signature.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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slaughter must be effected in such a way as to spare the animals any unnecessary suffering
European Convention for the Protection of Animals for Slaughter, 1979
Source: Wikipedia -
Each Contracting Party may authorise derogations from the provisions concerning prior stunning in the following cases: – slaughtering in accordance with religious rituals
European Convention for the Protection of Animals for Slaughter, 1979
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
It was the first time European governments agreed, in writing, that a slaughtered animal's suffering was a matter for international law rather than local custom. But the same treaty carved out the exemption that keeps the stunning debate alive in European courts and legislatures more than four decades later.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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