Polish lawmaker backs Jews fightingproposed ritual slaughter ban

As the government prepares to vote onanimal-rights legislation to prohibit kosher and halal slaughter, oppositionlawmaker Michal Kaminski says country is 'making a mistake'

A consumer buys meat inWarsaw, Poland, Friday July 9, 2004. After Poland joined the European Union onMay 1st, food prices increased in the country, with the sharpest rise, 21.7percent, for meat.(AP/Alik Keplicz)

As the Polish parliament gears up to votenext week on legislation that may effectively ban ritual slaughter in thecountry, one opposition MP wants the Jewish community to know he’s on theirside.

As the Polish parliament gears up to vote next week onlegislation that may effectively ban ritual slaughter in the country, oneopposition MP wants the Jewish community to know he’s on their side.

“I think they destroyed the very goodrelations between the Polish and Jewish people that has grown since Polishindependence,” he said in an interview.

Poland is currently a large exporter of kosher andhalal meat across Europe, Turkey and Israel. Similar legislation was passed inearly 2013, resulting in a hiatus on all kosher and halal animal slaughteruntil the law was overturned by the constitutional court in late 2014.

“These restrictions on kosher slaughter arein complete contradiction to the principle of freedom of religion of theEuropean Union,” said European Jewish Association (EJA) Chairman Rabbi MenachemMargolin.

“I call on the Polish government to notlegislate this shameful law and to take into consideration that the Jewishpeople’s trust in the Polish leadership is deteriorating. I don’t want toimagine what the next stage will be after legislating the Holocaust Law andputting limits on kosher slaughter in the country,” he said.

Michal Kaminski of the Union of European Democrats.(Adrian Grycuk/CC-SA)

The potential slaughter ban comes on the heels of thecontroversial “Holocaust bill” ratified earlier this month that couldostensibly impose jail time of up to three years on “whoever accuses, publiclyand against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsibleor complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich,” accordingto the language of the bill.

Since the law passed, Jews in Poland and around theworld have bristled, and Israel issued a series of rare reprimands against itsally. There has also been an increasing amount of anti-Semitic rhetoric in thePolish media in response to Jewish pushback against the Holocaust bill.

A journalist for one of Poland’s largest radiostations posted on Facebook about a “war with the Jews”; the state-runtelevision station tweeted that the Jews opposed the law because they wanted toseize Polish property (and then subsequently apologized to the Israeliambassador); and a former priest distributed and sold t-shirts denyingresponsibility for a Polish-perpetrated pogrom against Jews under the Germanoccupation.

Still, Kaminski emphasizes that the anti-ritualslaughter legislation, which has been raised numerous times over the lastmonths, is neither a reprisal for outspoken opposition to the Holocaust billnor does it stem from anti-Semitic motives.

“I’m in deepest opposition to thisgovernment,” said Kaminski, “but I absolutely believe they are notanti-Semites. I think ? I hope ? they are decent people.”

A matter of animal rights, not religious freedom

Krak?w-based Klaudia Klimek, chairperson of theSocial-Cultural Association of Jews in Poland and chief of staff for UED,agreed that the primary focus of the legislation isn’t ritual slaughter, butanimal rights in general. She said that most of the bill deals with issues suchas fur production and animal cruelty by pet owners.

 Klaudia Klimek heads upthe Warsaw wing of Poland’s largest Jewish cultural organization, the TSKZ.(courtesy)

“The main thing is that there should be astipulation that allows kosher slaughter for the country’s religiouscommunities,” she said. “But as long as the local communities are able topractice freedom of religion, then if that’s what Polish society wants ? if they want to have a humanitarian way of killing animals, youcan’t really say no. I mean, other countries also have those kinds of laws.”

It is also unclear whether the proposed law wouldcompletely ban the ritual slaughter of animals, or if it would just affect thecommercial production and export of kosher and halal meat. The bill hasundergone several changes since its introduction in October, and legislatorsare reportedly still unsure exactly what they’ll be voting on next week.

“We’ll only know next week when we get theofficial text of the bill, but as far as we know right now, there is noprovision [to allow ritual slaughter] for the local community,” said Klimek.

The EJA said in a statement, however, that even if thebill only targeted large commercial exporters of meat while allowing the localJewish community to continue ritual slaughter on a smaller scale, this wouldaffect Jewish communities across Europe.

Rabbi Menachem Margolin (courtesy European JewishAssociation)

But keeping it local, Klimek said that the Jewish andMuslim communities in Poland are small enough not to need factories to produceenough kosher and halal meat to feed the Polish population. Likewise, thoughprices might go up if the commercial slaughterhouses are moved elsewhere, thatmight not exactly spell disaster for observant Jews on the continent and mayindeed be a needed boon for animal rights.

“When we imagine kosher slaughter, we thinkabout the shochet [ritual slaughterer] standing in front of the cow, making hisknife very perfect, cutting in a smooth move, and the animal goes to sleep,”Klimek said.

“That’s what we have in our heads,” shesaid. “But that’s not what is happening in the factories. Animals know thatthey’re going to be killed. They’re listening to each other because they’re notknocked unconscious [before being killed], so they know something bad is aboutto happen.

“They’re upside down in these metal cages,and nobody is checking if the cutting was done well or not, so if it wasn’tdone well, the animal is sometimes choking to death rather than bleeding out.Nothing nice is happening there.”

Other countries could pick up the knife

While prices on kosher meat in Israel and parts ofEurope might go up temporarily if ritual slaughter were to be banned in Poland,another similarly-positioned country in central Europe could potentially pickup the slack. When there was no kosher meat production in Poland from 2013 to2014, Lithuania made a strong bid to act as a replacement.

Illustrative: A butcher at the Carmel Market in TelAviv (Photo credit Nicky Kelvin/Flash90)

France and Britain are among the countries that wouldbe most affected were commercial production of kosher meat to temporarilycease, but any repercussions would likely not have a tremendous impact on therelatively large markets.

Shechita UK, an advocacy group that seeks to protectthe Jewish right to ritual slaughter, is keeping tabs on the situation. Thegroup kept comments to a minimum as discussions about the bill continue to takeplace behind closed doors.

“We have been working closely with PolishChief Rabbi [Michael] Schudrich and are monitoring this situation as itdevelops,” a Shechita UK spokesman told The Times of Israel.

Meanwhile, Klimek suggests that the ritual slaughterlaw simply be removed from the larger animal rights bill and voted onindependently as a bill of its own. She said that this would make sense becauseritual slaughter is a religious issue, and also because as it stands now,lawmakers are likely to feel pressured to vote to ban ritual slaughter simplybecause it’s part of the larger animal rights package.

She said by separating it from blatantly immoralissues such as animal abuse by pet owners, the ritual slaughter bill law couldbe voted on based on its own merits.

“I think voting on it as a standalone issuewould help people approach the topic in a fair way,” Klimek said. “This wouldbe the most fair thing for the Jewish community, the meat producers, and theparliamentarians.”

By Yaakov Schwartz

Link-> https://www.timesofisrael.com/polish-lawmaker-backs-jews-fighting-proposed-ritual-slaughter-ban/