The ICA store(Credit: Mabry Campbell) Last month, authorities in Sweden began seizing kosher meat products from Malmo’s only kosher meat shop, eventually shuttering the store’s entire kosher section over supposed health concerns. The reason given by the government health inspectors for the removing of kosher meat from of the ICA Kvantum Malmborgs Linmhamn shop which offers kosher meat to Malmo’s 800 Jewish citizens was tied to “sanitation reasons,” as well as a lack of a proper license to import food products. Malmo has been at the center of issues revolving around anti-Semitism, regardless of its relatively small Jewish community. The ICA shop reached an agreement to offer kosher food to the citizens of Malmo in the mid-1980s, following the closing of a Jewish kosher shop in the city center. For the past twenty years this compromise allowed Malmo’s Jewish community to retain access to kosher product. Now the Jewish community will have to leave the city to find kosher meat. The option to leave the city in search of kosher product may, however, not be feasible for much longer. Since 2013, Sweden has seen repeated attempts to ban the import of kosher meat. Sweden is one of the only five countries who currently ban the kosher and halal slaughter of animals. Residents are reporting that they may have to resort to following vegetarian and vegan diets due to the lack of other options. Rising anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment in European countries had led to increase pushes against traditions associated with the two communities. This past February, the Polish parliament voted on a law which would ban kosher and halal slaughter in Poland, while Belgium has a ban on kosher slaughter going into effect in 2019. Similar efforts against other cultural touchstones in Muslim and Jewish communities are being attacked in Europe. Iceland voted on a ban on ritual circumcision in March, while similar circumcision ban attempts have also been proposed in Germany and Poland.