Jewish organizations and companies had appealed the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) regulations in court, claiming they made kosher slaughter difficult, which resulted in a disruption in supply of kosher meat in Canada.

The applicants say the CFIA requirements reduced the supply of kosher beef by 55 per cent and veal by 90 per cent.

Federal regulations require that an animal be unconscious before it is hung after it is ritually slaughtered and that requirement will continue to be enforced the CFIA said in a note to ritual slaughter licence holders on Aug. 2.

However, three specific unconsciousness measures will no longer be enforced. They include:

• Absence of rhythmic breathing
• Absence of palpebral reflex (eye movement)
• Absence of corneal reflex

The CFIA had specific requirements around timed measurement of these indicators of unconsciousness, which were created in 2019 but weren’t enforced until June, 2023. The extra time to comply with the three measures has meant that some meat production licence holders have stopped ritual slaughter due to the decreasing in efficiency.

Animals that are conventionally slaughtered are stunned using gas or captive bolt, which are accepted methods of rendering an animal unconscious. The applicants argued that the three measures weren’t an indicator of unconsciousness, but of death.

Kosher and halal slaughter have other requirements around how animals are slaughtered, which don’t allow stunning before slaughter.

In the decision, Justice Guy Régimbald wrote in a decision released July 24 that the CFIA standards were unnecessary as there are other ways in which kosher slaughter had proved unconsciousness over many years and that the applicants’ rights to freedom of religion and equality under the Charter of Rights and Freedom were impaired.

The applicants were the Jewish Community Council of Montreal, Kashruth Council of Canada, Rabbi Abraham Banon, and kosher meat distribution companies Mehadrin and Shefa.

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The opinions are a win for cell-cultivated meat companies, executives said, because it means observant followers of Judaism and Islam could one day consume their products.

“It’s another marker around making cultivated meat a real solution,” said Josh Tetrick, CEO of GOOD Meat.

Cultivated meat is currently only sold in tiny quantities in the United States and Singapore, but companies hope private and public investors will infuse the sector with enough cash to scale production and alter diets around the world.

Cultivated meat is derived from a sample of animal cells that are fed a nutrient mix and grown in steel vats, avoiding the need for land-intensive industrial farming operations and slaughterhouses.

Companies in the fledgling industry hope their product will appeal to vegans and vegetarians as well as climate-conscious meat-eaters.

GOOD convened a panel of three sharia experts who reviewed the company’s production and on Sunday said cultivated meat can be halal if, among other factors, the cells from which the meat is made come from an animal slaughtered according to Islamic law.

Though the Oakland-area company’s chicken does not currently meet that standard, the opinion provides a roadmap for the industry to make halal products, Tetrick said in an interview.

The Orthodox Union (OU), the largest kosher certification agency, on Sept. 6 said cultivated chicken produced by Israeli company SuperMeat met its standards because the chicken cells were not fed any animal ingredients and were extracted from a fertilized egg before any blood spots appeared.

SuperMeat and the OU are working on broader guidelines for the industry, company CEO Ido Savir said.

More than 12 million people in the United States eat kosher products and eight million eat halal products, according to the OU and Islamic Services of America, a halal certification agency.

Regulators cleared cultivated chicken for U.S. consumption earlier this year and it has since been served at some high-end restaurants.

— Reporting for Reuters by Leah Douglas.

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