Government safeguards shechita
A POTENTIALLY crippling blow to the kosher meat industry in Australia was averted last week, with the Primary Industries Ministerial Council (PIMC) ruling that ritual slaughter would continue to be exempt from stunning.
A POTENTIALLY crippling blow to the kosher meat industry in Australia was averted last week, with the Primary Industries Ministerial Council (PIMC) ruling that ritual slaughter would continue to be exempt from stunning.
The council met in Melbourne, amid protests by animal rights groups, and voted not to change regulations, which permit the slaughter of animals without stunning under exemptions for kosher and halal meat.
In a communique released last week, PIMC said it had “accepted views of religious groups” in making its decision.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) executive director Peter Wertheim said he was delighted with the outcome and that the organisation had been “working towards this outcome since the federal government first raised the issue with us in 2008”.
“The ECAJ has welcomed the decision of the Primary Industries Ministerial Council last Friday on the matter of religious slaughter to ‘continue discussions with the religious groups in order to settle an applicable risk-management framework’,” Wertheim said.
“No changes to the law were suggested. This effectively maintains the status quo regarding shechita in Australia for the time being.”
Shechita, the practice of Jewish ritual slaughter, has been a topic of heated debate in recent months, with pressure from animal rights groups and sections of the media to ban the killing of animals without pre-slaughter stunning.
Currently, abattoirs that produce kosher or halal meat receive exemptions from stunning.
Wertheim said ECAJ had been cooperating “closely with the rabbis, and had a succession of meetings over the last three years with officials from the Commonwealth departments of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry, and Biosecurity Victoria”.
ECAJ president Danny Lamm wrote to Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Joe Ludwig, thanking him for his support.
“Both personally and on behalf of the Australian Jewish community, I write to thank you and your state ministerial colleagues for your wise decision at the Primary Industries Ministerial Council last Friday to maintain the current legality of kosher religious slaughter of livestock (shechita) in Australia,” Lamm wrote.
There were fears Australia could head down the same path as New Zealand, which effectively outlawed ritual slaughter in May last year, before partially overturning the ban just six months later.
A spokesperson for the PIMC told The AJN that “there would be no change to current ritual slaughter practices”, and that the “states and Commonwealth are committed to continue working to improve standards”.
The issue of animal cruelty was catapulted into the spotlight earlier this year after the ABC program Four Corners aired a sickening exposé on the treatment of animals in the live export trade.
Wertheim said it was important to distinguish the practices of maverick exporters from those of shechita proponents.
“No expert contests the proposition that shechita is a humane method of slaughter,” Wertheim said.
“We have all been appalled by the horrific scenes of cruelty to animals in other countries on our television screens, but this has absolutely nothing to do with shechita. Animal slaughter in Australia, including kosher slaughter, is closely monitored and regulated, and the standards of shechita itself, which forbid the mistreatment of the animal in any way, are very exacting”.
ADAM KAMIEN
ECAJ executive director Peter Wertheim has welcomed the decision.
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