[Elder of Ziyon] Poland's ban on religious slaughter hurting its economy ~ EoZ

Friday, May 17, 2013

[Elder of Ziyon] Poland's ban on religious slaughter hurting its economy

From AP:

Until January, slaughterhouses across Poland — a deeply Catholic nation — were the unlikely venues for the Islamic and Jewish slaughter of animals, which in both religions involves a swift cut to the throat of a conscious animal and death by bleeding.

Millions of euros were being made exporting the halal and kosher meat to countries like Egypt, Iran and Israel, as well as to Muslim and Jewish markets inside Europe.

In a victory for a growing animal rights movement, activists succeeded in getting a ban on such religious slaughter. But with economic decline deepening and exports seen as a possible salvation, the government faces pressure to get the practice reinstated legally — and is scrambling to do so.

Though Poland's own cuisine is heavy in pork, a meat banned by Jewish and Islamic laws, the country has cut out this niche business for itself in one example of the economic savvy Poland has shown since joining the European Union in 2004. Kosher and halal meat exports have grown between 20 and 30 percent per year in recent years as the largely agricultural country has capitalized on its low labor costs and a reputation for healthy farm animals.
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The kosher and halal business had boomed until January, when the ban took effect following a ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal. Though the actual slaughter was carried out by specially trained Muslim and Jewish officials, the industry also created thousands of supporting jobs for others.

Animal rights activists argue that killing animals without stunning them first causes unnecessary suffering to the animals. Jewish and Muslim leaders strongly disagree, and insist that their method is actually more humane, in part became it causes the animals to lose consciousness very fast. They argue that standard industrial slaughter involves pre-stunning that is sometimes not effective, leading to even greater suffering.

Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, says Jewish tradition has always been concerned with the welfare of animals, noting, for instance, that it bans hunting and any senseless suffering.

"For close to 3,000 years, Jewish slaughter practices have been followed that minimize pain to the animal," Schudrich said.

Mufti Tomasz Miskiewicz, the top Muslim leader in Poland...says there is a degree of unfairness in banning Jewish and Islamic slaughter when so many Polish Catholics follow a similar practice themselves at Christmas, when carp are slaughtered in homes across the nation without any pre-stunning.

I found a description of this central European Catholic practice:

Chef Václav Fríč, who specializes in traditional Czech cooking, has this advice. "To kill it, you first have to hit it hard in the head, then I cut the gills and the tail so the fish stops flapping about," he says.

Can anyone imagine that the Polish would pass a law against that tradition?

I recently discovered that the Swiss law that bans ritual slaughter was widely recognized at the time of its passing, in 1894, to be the result of an antisemitic campaign:

In France an outbreak of hostility to Israelites in January, 1893, was led by the Marquisde Mores, in connection with the Panama Canal scandals. He charged them with corrupting French honesty and despising principles of honor. The police were required to disperse his disorderly assemblies. The same year, in Switzerland, the Anti-Semites, chiefly Protestants, carried a law prohibiting as cruel the Jewish method of slaughtering animals for food. In Rumania it was enacted that, from the opening of 1893, Jewish children should be excluded from state schools, and in some districts Jewish families, resident therein for generations, were forcibly expelled.

In fact, the Committee of the Geneva Society for the Protection of Animals urged Swiss citizens to vote against a ban on kosher slaughter in a referendum partly due to its antisemitic origins:

Dear fellow-citizens,—You will have to pronounce upon the law which has been requested concerning the way of slaughtering animals intended for food.

This law, which specially aims at our Hebrew fellow citizens, may, by its nature, seriously damage our Federal Constitution, which grants the liberty of worship.

The Geneva Society for the Protection of Animals recommends you to vote:

NO.

1st. Because the Society thinks that this law has not so much in view the protection due to animals, as the wish of making an anti-Semitic manifestation, and that it would be a first step towards religious persecution.

2nd. Because there has existed in Geneva, since 1886, a method of slaughtering called mitigated, proposed by our Society, with a humane purpose, accepted by the Great Council and approved by the Chief Rabbi, a method which reconciles what is due to religious freedom with what is duo to the protection of animals.

The law submitted to your vote is also bad as far as our commerce is concerned; our commerce has already suffered heavily. If the law is passed, what will happen? Our Hebrew fellow-citizens will import their meat from the neighbouring countries, who, more liberal than we are, will be the only ones to benefit by their tolerance.

Dear fellow-citizens,—For these motives, and in the name of liberty, justice, and equitv, we recommend you to vote: '"'NO.

Long live Geneva! Long live the Confederation!

Signed.

The Committee of the Geneva Society for the Protection of Animals.
The Secretary General, E. De Bude.
The President, J. Cuenoud.
The Vice-President, J. L'huillier.