Polish lawmakers expected to back kosher slaughter

The Polish parliament, the Sejm, is reportedly set to amend the law on the protection of animals to allow kosher slaughter without stunning. “We have prepared a draft amendment to the law on the protection of animals,” Agriculture Minister Stanislaw Kalemba was quoted as saying by the PAP news agency. The parliament may vote on the proposal in January.

In late November, Poland’s Constitutional Court ruled in that a 2004 government directive enshrining ritual slaughter was unconstitutional on procedural grounds. Ritually slaughtered meat is exported from Poland mainly to Muslim countries and Israel in an industry that is worth approximately US$ 259 million per year, according to JTA.

Animal rights activists against ritual slaughter and supporters of ritual slaughter have been writing letters and sending petitions to government authorities.

On a website set up by supporters of ritual slaughter, Polish lawmaker Pawel Suski, a member of the ruling Civic Platform party, wrote: “Are you also supporting stoning of women?” Others opponents of ritual slaughter wrote: “The Jews have their own country… this is Poland, not Israel”; “Go 10 meters underground, where Hitler was preparing a place for you”; and “Poland for the Poles, not for you and the rest of the Jews.”

Supporters of ritual slaughter called on Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to condemn Suski’s comments. Piotr Kadlcik, president of the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland, said he would write a letter of complaint to the parliamentary ethics committee.

Poland reportedly intends to implement EU Regulation 1099, a set of rules meant to legalize religious slaughter in the EU’s 27 member states. The regulation is scheduled to go into effect on 1 January 2013. Countries are not required to implement the rules or may implement them partially.