Warsaw – A top court in Poland said Tuesday that the ritual slaughter of animals by religious groups, including Jews and Muslims, violates the country’s constitution and animal protection laws.
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The ruling puts it in conflict with European Union rules that allow the practice on the grounds of religious freedom.
In a victory for animal rights activists, the Constitutional Tribunal said regulations allowing for animals to have their throats cut and then bleed to death without previously being stunned are against Polish law. It also said that in issuing regulations that allow for such practices, the agriculture minister exceeded his powers and violated the constitution.
The ruling sets the stage for more discussion when an EU law goes into effect Jan. 1 allowing the practice and setting common standards among members. It gives animal rights supporters fuel for debate next year on whether Poland must comply with EU laws and to what extent.
Poland introduced its regulations in 2004, when it joined the EU, intending to bring the national laws closer to those of the bloc.
The Agriculture Ministry has provided licenses to 17 slaughterhouses to carry out the ritual. Poland has small Muslim and Jewish minorities and also exports meat from ritual slaughter.
In a similar dispute in the Netherlands, the lower house of parliament approved a ban last year. Animal rights groups and a large anti-Islam political party — and a majority of Dutch voters — supported the bill. But after an outcry that the ban would violate religious freedoms, support evaporated when the bill was sent to the upper house.
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, President of the Conference of European Rabbis, condemned Poland’s top court ruling saying: “This latest development in Poland is a deeply troubling challenge to a fundamental cornerstone of Jewish religious practice and yet we know from the CER’s most recent meeting with President, Bronisław Komorowski that the political will to protect Shechita is there. Our challenge is to ensure that translates into a swift resolution of this constitutional confusion.”
Here we go again….
Poland outlawed Schitta in 1939, right before the majority population gave practical and/or moral support (to the Nazi invaders) for the extermination of the Jews! (Without “stunning” them first…)
It’s absolutely amazing to me that Jews still live in these accursed lands. Everyday we hear trouble in Hungary, in Poland, in Russia, in France, in Germany, in Austria, in Ukraine, WHAT ARE JEWS STILL DOING IN THESE ***** COUNTRY’S?!?!
For 1200 years they’ve hounded us in Europe but there was nowhere else to go, but now??
Each time this happens, I wonder if they also ban sport hunting and other forms of cruel animal killing from bullets, arrows, rocks, or just crushing an animal to death with a foot stomp or a club so it can be eaten. They always single out shechita as the problem. It may not look pretty, but it is more humane.
You don’t get this at all, the ruling is actually very philosemitic. There are few customers for Halal and Kosher meat in Poland so most of this meat is actually exported (sometimes to Israel). Many Jews don’t like when Jewish money is spent in Poland so the court is protecting Jews from giving money to those ! #$% Poles.