shechita

Poland plans protection for shechita in law

Nissan Tzur — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:30:56 +0100

Poland is a step closer to enshrining the ritual slaughter of animals in law.

The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, announced last week that his government had submitted a draft of new regulations that will allow kosher and halal slaughter, while reducing the suffering of the animals.

“The government will present parliament with the proper modifications. One of them may be to eliminate the use of rotating cages before the slaughter of the animals. Our proposal will systematically reduce the suffering of animals,” said Mr Tusk.

He added that the government’s proposed legislation was motivated by economics. Poland is one of the biggest exporters of kosher meat in Europe.

The Polish parliament is scheduled to vote on the new legislation in the next few weeks.

Last November, the Polish Constitutional Court ruled that the slaughter of animals without pre-stunning was unconstitutional.

The decision came after an appeal by animal rights activists who claimed that the decision by the Ministry of Agriculture to exempt Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughter from animal welfare laws contradicted the constitution.

Shortly after the court’s decision, Poland’s Agriculture Minister Stanislaw Kalemba announced a plan to amend the law to permit the continuation of ritual slaughter.

The court’s decision caused a severe shortage of kosher meat in Poland and the Jewish community lobbied the government to reverse the decision.

The Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, praised the move, saying: “It is great news for Poland’s Jews and a very important step towards the end of the conflict.”

The EU has passed a series of laws regulating kosher slaughter, but allowed each country to decide whether to adopt the laws or come up with their own legislation.

No complacency

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:02:11 +0000

The timing could not be more pointedly awful. Just one week after we reported that, in the wake of the horse meat scandal, the government was turning to the kashrut authorities for advice about securing the food chain, we reveal that nearly half the population want to ban shechita. Our poll, which was carried out last week, is stark in its brutality. By 45 per cent to 27 per cent, the public would outlaw shechita. Only slightly fewer — 38 per cent — would ban circumcision. When we read of the ever-growing threats in other parts of the EU, there is an inclination towards complacency. We look aghast at the news from abroad but comfort ourselves that such issues could never arise here as live politics.

Today’s poll should explode that myth. Rest on our laurels and the opponents of shechita and circumcision will impose their agenda on us. So it is disappointing — and worrying — that not one person involved in the British campaigns to preserve shechita and brit milah was prepared to react to the poll. Burying our hands in the sand is the opposite of what is needed.

Forty five per cent of Britons ready to ban shechita

Simon Rocker — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 20:45:30 +0000

Almost half the population favour a ban on religious slaughter of animals for meat and nearly a third want a ban on male circumcision, according to the results of a YouGov poll for the JC.

Asked whether they support or oppose a ban on religious slaughter, 45 per cent back a ban, 27 per cent are against and 28 per cent say they do not know.

Opinion diverges less when respondents are asked about “male circumcision for religious reasons”, with 38 per cent supporting a ban, 35 per cent against and 27 per cent undecided.

Dayan Yisroel Lichtenstein, head of the Federation Beth Din, said: “It’s worrying and it shows we need to do a lot more public relations to put our case.”

Dayan Lichtenstein is particularly concerned at the level of support for a ban on shechita among young people “because I would have expected their education to have made them more liberally-minded.”

Forty-one per cent of 18-24 year-olds would ban both shechita and circumcision.

However, the most striking difference emerges in the political inclinations of those polled. As many as 71 per cent of people who say they would vote UKIP back a ban on religious slaughter, and 51 per cent support a ban on male circumcision — the only political allegiance where more than half back bans in either case.

Dayan Pinchas Toledano, former head of the Sephardi Beth Din, now Haham of Amsterdam, said that the survey’s results “don’t surprise or shock me”.

The Dutch community recently mobilised to protect shechita after politicians wanted to introduce compulsory pre-stunning of animals before religious slaughter — which would have meant banning the Jewish method of killing animals.

Dayan Toledano, himself a retired mohel, said: “If you try to ban such practices, you have no religious freedom at all.”

Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, rabbi to the Reform movement, commented: “I greatly appreciate living in a tolerant, pluralist country where key rituals of kashrut and brit milah are understood and respected. These results indicate a worrying intolerance, not only towards the specific rituals of shechita and brit milah, but possibly may indicate a more widespread intolerance towards Jews and other minorities in the UK.

“I am particularly concerned by the statistics of the UKIP voters and I assume this pattern of rejecting Jewish religious rituals would also be mirrored if a similar question were to be posed about Muslim rituals.”
The German government recently passed legislation to protect religious circumcision after a mohel was arrested last year.

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, senior rabbi of the Masorti movement, was also not surprised by the figures because “there has been a lot of discussion across Europe”.

Rabbi Wittenberg, who does not eat meat himself, said that there had not been proven to be “a kinder method” to kill animals than shechita.

“The real issue is the frequent cruelty within the meat industry generally and the question of how animals live their lives, not only how they die.”

Brit milah is “an ancient ritual of identity and a significant commandment,” he said. “It is essential it is always practised with maximum skill, scrupulous hygiene and a minimisation of pain and careful aftercare.
“Having witnessed many circumcisions, I believe overwhelmingly that the pain quickly passes and I don’t believe that it causes lasting trauma.”

But David Graham, senior research fellow of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, cautioned against reading too much into the figures.

“While this may be indicative of a general negative attitude towards these Jewish traditions, that conclusion cannot be drawn from this YouGov poll,” he said.

If people are asked are whether they support or oppose a ban on an issue, he said, “the seed of doubt is already sown in the respondent’s mind, before he or she has had a chance to consider what they are being asked. It is hardly surprising a majority opts for a ban.”

A spokesman for Jewish defence organisations Shechita UK and Milah UK refused to comment.

Shechita Board picks new boss

Simon Rocker — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 10:42:21 +0000

The London Board for Shechita, which licences kosher meat for the capital, has appointed a new chief executive.

Mark Goldwater, managing partner of QaulitySolicitors and a board member of Edgware’s Yeshurun Federation Synagogue, will take up the post in July. He succeeds David Rose, who is making aliyah after seven years at the LBS and who will remain as interim chief executive until summer.

Mr Goldwater said: “This is a huge opportunity to serve the community, and the advantage of first-class kosher produce is highlighted by the recent problems in other sectors of the food chain.”

Kosher meat protected from horsemeat scandal

Marcus Dysch — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:30:15 +0000

There is no danger of horse DNA being found in kosher meat, consumers have been told following the scandal which hit non-kosher products this week.

Horse DNA and traces of pork were found in beefburgers sold in major British supermarkets, including Tesco, and produced by an Irish abattoir which was once a leading kosher meat facility. Much of the meat was subsequently withdrawn from sale.

One kosher-supervised company in Lancashire works with Liffey Meats, based in County Cavan, Ireland, and supplies kosher butchers in London and Manchester.

But the JC understands that the kosher meat is not sourced from the Liffey production facilities at which the horse DNA was found.

Manchester Beth Din administrator Rabbi Yehuda Brodie said safeguards in the shechita process meant no horse or pig matter would be present in supervised products.

The London Board for Shechita confirmed that it had not carried out any religious slaughter at the Irish abattoir for a number of years.

A joint venture between the two Jewish organisations and Liffey Meats was launched in 2000. The firm had produced kosher beef for the Israeli market for 15 years until January 1999.

Rabbi Brodie said: “This story highlights the importance of buying kosher meat produced under a registered authority, where the added safeguards involved in supervision would ensure that any incident such as this could not possibly happen.

“It should also serve as a lesson to those who, whilst not particular about eating kosher meat, would draw the line at eating pig or horse meat. Such a practice is fraught with danger.”

Liffey managing director Francis Mallon said the DNA traces had been found in three products and represented “no risk to human health”.

Making light of a meaty issue

Geoffrey Alderman — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:53:58 +0000

In November I participated in a debate held at the London Jewish Cultural Centre and billed as "a thought-provoking and provocative evening about the relationship between Jews, meat and shechitah (ritual slaughter)". The evening was undoubtedly thought-provoking and certainly provocative. It provoked me to think seriously about the phenomenon of Jewish vegetarianism, and about the underlying motives of those who propagate this dogma.

I was not invited to this debate: I invited myself (and paid the fee). Not to learn about vegetarianism, or to be told what I already knew - that a number of rabbinic luminaries (including Rav Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandate Palestine) - have voiced their sympathies with vegetarianism, or have indeed been vegetarians themselves. I went, primarily, to test my suspicion that an attempt is being made by Jewish vegetarians worldwide to ally the philosophy of vegetarianism to the precepts of Orthodox Judaism. In recent years I have noted this mésalliance with increasing concern.

True Orthodox Jews (it has been said to me) must be vegetarians. For reasons to which I shall allude, this strikes me as nonsense. I was to some extent prepared for this nonsense to be mouthed once more at the LJCC debate. But what I wasn't prepared for was the shameless manner in which those who purveyed it went about their work.

The evening began with the screening of the notoriously divisive propaganda film A Sacred Duty, made in 2007 by the South-African/American Emmy-award winning vegetarian Lionel Friedberg. The LJCC billed this as a "documentary" but, believe me, such a description is a travesty. Sacred Duty is certainly a slick production, professionally pandering to the obsession with imminent man-made environmental catastrophe that is one of the hallmarks of contemporary "green" politics. There's certainly a debate to be had about the extent to which global warming (which is a fact) is man-made. In teaching my own students about environmental politics I'm careful to present a balanced argument - pointing out (for example) that there was a period of equally undoubted global warming some 10,000 years ago, but that this could hardly have been due to fossil-fuel emissions (it was in fact the inevitable result of a periodic "wobble" in the rotation of the earth).

Friedberg will have none of this. His film blames all the environmental problems of the world on the evils of humankind. And the film leads, inexorably, to the "evil" of meat-eating, climaxing with scenes shot inside various slaughterhouses.

Those who have seen the Nazi propaganda film Der Ewige Jude will know that this Goebbels-inspired masterpiece of 1940 climaxes its denigration of Jews and Jewish values with an attack on shechitah. While I am not for one moment accusing Friedberg of being a copy-cat I'm afraid that I could not help bringing this to mind as I watched Sacred Duty. In one respect, indeed, Friedberg has stolen a march on Goebbels. Goebbels could not include in Der Ewige Jude statements by Jewish religious authorities agreeing that Jews were a sub-human pestilence worthy only of eradication. But in Sacred Duty we have interviews with Orthodox rabbis who not only refrain from eating meat themselves, but who tell us that keeping kosher can only mean being vegetarian. "I am a vegetarian," declares Rabbi David Rosen, CBE, "precisely because I am a believing Jew… I am vegetarian because I am a religious Jew."

Well, it's precisely because I'm a religious Jew that I am a meat-eater. I cannot speak for Rabbi Rosen, but when I say my daily prayers I pray for the restoration of the Temple and of all its rituals - including the slaughter of animals for sacrifice and their consumption after slaughter. I believe that when the Temple is restored we will - all of us (including Rabbi Rosen if he's still around) - be obligated to eat the Korbon Pesach - the Passover Sacrifice, just as did Jesus the Jew.

You won't find this view, which is the normative Orthodox view, in Friedberg's film. When I articulated it in the informal discussion that followed its screening at the LJCC I was - alas - met with derision that can only have been born of comprehensive ignorance as to the authentic tenets of Jewish religious Orthodoxy.

Shechita board takes advice over 'market dominance' concerns

Simon Rocker — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 14:23:31 +0000

The London Board for Shechita is taking advice over competition law amid concern about the potential market dominance of two butchers.

It is consulting solicitors following the receipt of applications from two licensees to open what would be, in each case, their fifth kosher meat shop.

In a statement, the Board said that previous applications from both licensees had already raised concerns from other butchers of being “squeezed”.

The Board said that it did not know “whether or not these fears of market dominance are supported by the facts”. But it was “concerned that without a full understanding of the market and its legal responsibilities that any licensing decisions could be subject to legal challenge by aggrieved parties”.

One of the two butchers, Kosher Deli, already has four shops and a factory, with shares also in some of the Board-licensed abattoirs. The other, Stephen Grossman, who owns the Silverman’s chain, has a fourth shop, Simply Kosher, due to open shortly in Temple Fortune and is licensee for manufacturers Lewco Pak.

Until the Board has received legal advice, it will not grant new applications. Blanket restrictions on allowing new kosher meat shops to open near existing outlets had been lifted a long time ago, it explained.

Determination will beat threat to rituals

Shimon Cohen — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:00:00 +0000

In 2012 both shechita and milah came under attack across Europe.

We faced a serious attack on shechita in Poland and worked very hard with the exceptional Chief Rabbi Schudrich, to protect it. Here, Shechita UK has been vigilant as the Government prepares to replace existing legislation with EU Regulation 1099 on the Protection of Animals at the Time of Killing.

We are confident of success in maintaining the humane slaughter of animals in accordance with Jewish law will remain.

We know that in 2013 there will be three EU projects affecting shechita. A report on stunning methods for poultry will have a significant bearing on our assertion that shechita incorporates an integral stun, according to the EU’s own definition.

There will be a study on “animal welfare education” for which we have campaigned regarding the rights of consumers to know not only about the method of slaughter but also whether animals have been gassed, electrocuted, drowned or clubbed before slaughter.

In 2012, we faced the clearest threat to Milah in a generation, when a German district court ruled that Milah was an unlawful assault on a child. The German government quickly clarified the law resulting in Milah remaining legal. However, the challenge for all communities is to ensure that our regulation and standards of Milah are beyond reproach. Austria and Switzerland, already feeling the effect of the German decision, must show that they take this issue seriously to avoid constant public and legal challenges to Milah. We also await the outcome of a legal battle in New York which seeks to legislate on informed consent for circumcision.

For Shechita and Milah, the biggest challenge we face is communal apathy. We have to overcome the instinct to trust that, whatever happens, somebody somewhere will sort it out.

Shechita UK and Milah UK will be vigilant over the next year but we need the community’s support for our work to be successful.

Polish shift on shechita

Nissan Tzur — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:30:00 +0000

In the wake of a ruling last month that ritual slaughter was unconstitutional, the Polish Ministry of Agriculture has proposed an amendment to the law on animal welfare in order to protect the practice.

Parliament is scheduled to vote on the proposed change next month.

In a statement, the Ministry of Agriculture said that steps would be taken to avoid an infringement of a new EU regulation that approves ritual slaughter for all the EU’s 27 states and comes into effect on January 1, 2013. “Such deadline… allows the legislature to amend the provisions on the protection of animals,” the statement said.

Polish court sets stage for shechitah ban

Anna Sheinman — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 17:41:52 +0000

A Polish constitutional court has opened the door to a ban on religious slaughter methods in the country in a decision on Tuesday.

The ruling in a Warsaw court states that the current exemption for Jews and Muslims from stunning animals before they are killed, as kashrut laws require, is unconstitutional.

Kosher slaughter is currently carried out at 17 locations in Poland under an exemption announced by the Minister of Agriculture. The Polish Constitutional Tribunal has now ruled that in announcing this, the minister acted outside his powers.

However, Piotr Kadlcik, president of the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that shechitah is also allowed under the 1997 Law on Regulating the Relations between the State and the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland.

It is also likely that if there is no law upholding the right, the country will be in breach of European laws on the freedom of religion.

“It appears there is a legal contradiction here and it is too early to tell what this means,” Mr Kadlcik told JTA. "We are seeking legal advice on this right now."

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, President of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER), said: “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 shechitah is there.

“Our challenge is to ensure that translates into a swift resolution of this constitutional confusion.”