WARSAW—Polish lawmakers Friday rejected government-drafted legislation
that sought to allow the ritual slaughter of livestock, despite protests
from religious groups and concerns about damage to the country's meat
industry.
In ritual slaughter, used in the production of kosher and halal meat,
animals are bled to death with no prior stunning. Poland's animal
protection laws dictate that slaughterhouses stun animals before killing
them.
Associated Press
Farmers this week urged an end to a ban on ritual livestock slaughter.
An exception to the rule was in place until January, when it was
invalidated as a result of a ruling by the country's constitutional
court.
The ensuing ban triggered a nationwide discussion pitting animal-rights
advocates, who see the method as cruel, against the government, which
said jobs and profit in the meat industry were at stake. It drafted
legislation legalizing the practice again.
Hundreds of people on both sides of the dispute protested in front of
Parliament and government buildings this week. Farmers brought a
life-size plastic cow to the headquarters of the opposition conservative
Law and Justice party, whose leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said he would
vote against the government's proposal. Animal rights groups demanded
the ban be upheld.
On Friday, a group of lawmakers from the ruling camp voted with the
opposition to kill the bill, in a blow to Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Michael Schudrich, Poland's chief rabbi, sharply criticized the vote as
an infringement on "the basic rights of the country's Jewish and Muslim
populations, which will henceforth be forced to either buy more
expensive imported meat, or endorse an enforced vegetarianism."
He also noted that hunting for sport, in which animals also suffer,
remains legal. "The right to this pleasure is now, in the Polish legal
system, ranked higher than the basic religious freedoms of two
non-Christian confessions," he said.
Piotr Kadlcik, head of the Union of Jewish Communities of Poland, said
the lawmakers were driven by populism and superstitions, while the
Conference of European Rabbis said it was a sad day for Polish and
European Jews.
Poland had the largest Jewish community in Europe before the invasion by
Germany in 1939, which sparked World War II and led to the construction
of Nazi death camps on German-occupied territory. Only about 8,000
people declared they were Jewish in the national census in 2011.
Despite the criticism, the government has no plans to try again to
overturn the ban, even though it will cost the meat industry several
hundred million dollars in lost revenue a year, Prime Minister Tusk
said.
"After the vote my mind was sad but my heart rejoiced," he said, acknowledging concerns about the inhumane treatment of animals.
Associations of farmers have said leaving the ritual slaughter ban in
place will lead to the loss of some 6,000 jobs in the meat industry.
Exports to Muslim countries and to Israel, major destinations for Polish
halal and kosher meat, dropped by 70% this year as a result of the ban,
Agriculture Minister Stanislaw Kalemba said Friday in Parliament.
The matter will likely be revisited by the courts. A local court in
northeastern Poland has asked the Constitutional Tribunal to rule on
whether the ban violates freedom of religion.
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