| By :
Mark Etinger
A new animal welfare code in New Zealand became effective a week ago, legally binding slaughterhouses to stun animals before they are butchered for commercial consumption. This new code effectively bans shechitah, the Jewish ritual slaughter of animals to create kosher meat under Jewish dietary laws. Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, president of the Organization of Rabbis of Australasia, called the banning of kosher meat a “blatantly discriminatory action.” “This decision by the New Zealand government… is outrageous,” Gutnick said. “We will be doing everything possible to get this decision reversed.” Already, Gutnick has scheduled an emergency teleconference to discuss ways to repeal this decision with representatives of the Organization of Rabbis of Australasia and local Jewish leaders. New Zealand’s claim that the intention of the code is to protect the animals’ rights to be “humanely killed” seems faulty, as well as hypocritical, since kosher meat can still be imported into the country. Because of this fact, many critics of the code believe it’s actually rooted in anti-Semitism. New Zealand’s Agriculture Minister David Carter claimed the new code was enacted to “ensure that the animals are treated humanely and in accordance with good practice.” However, shechitah “is as humane, if not more humane than any of the current methods used commercially today,” Gutnick states. The New Zealand government is blatantly ignoring this fact, as well as the scientific consensus supporting the humaneness of the kosher meat method. Opening the door to having kosher meat delivered does provide an alternative for the Jewish population of New Zealand, albeit an increasingly expensive one. However, under Kiwi law, importing poultry of any kind is prohibited. Therefore, anybody found in New Zealand eating kosher chicken must be breaking the law. It is also possible, however, that the Kiwi decision was nothing more than a government administrative oversight. The slaughtering of kosher meat had up until this week been given exemption by the New Zealand National Animal Welfare Advisory Council, because preventing it went against the freedom of religious practice, which is promised in the nation’s Bill of Rights. “This is an infringement of the right of Jews to observe their religion,” pointed out David Zwartz, the chairman of the Wellington Jewish Council. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Section 14 states “everyone has the right to manifest that person’s religion or belief in worship, observance, practice, or teaching, either individually or in community with others, and either in public or private.” This would seemingly guarantee the right of Jews in New Zealand to continue producing kosher meat. Even if the code isn’t intended as a direct attack against the New Zealand Jewish community, it is still a case of the Kiwi government putting animal’s rights above the rights of humans. The new code is viewed directly as a banning of kosher meat, not a banning of ritual slaughter overall. Islam, another religion which features strict dietary laws, allows its butchers to stun animals before slaughtering them. Therefore the new code has little effect on New Zealand’s Muslim community. Curiously, the nation’s Prime Minister, John Key, is himself a Jew and the offspring of an immigrant who fled Nazi-occupied Europe. New Zealand now joins Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway as countries that have banned shechitah. However, the Swedish government does allow shechitah for private consumption. New Zealand only contains around 7,000 Jews. Kosher butchers in New Zealand use less than 100 cattle and lamb a year.
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