Jewish groups are warning that religious freedoms in Poland are in danger after the countrys highest court outlawed Jewish and Islamic ritual slaughter, classifying them as unconstitutional and a violation of animal cruelty laws. One Jewish group said the ruling was devastating to Jewish welfare and freedom of religion, and vowed to petition the Polish president. On Wednesday, Polands Constitutional Court ruled that traditional religious slaughtering techniques inflict unnecessary pain on the animals. The court had been petitioned by animal rights groups arguing that ritual methods were cruel. For years, Polish law has required that animals be stunned before they are killed in abattoirs. However, both Jewish kosher slaughter and Islamic halal slaughter prohibit the stunning of animals before they are killed, and the Agriculture Ministry subsequently waived this requirement when it clashed with religious guidelines. New EU regulations also provide Jews and Muslims with a waiver when it comes to the stunning of livestock, citing religious freedom. Individual member states can issue those waivers at their discretion. The Polish court ruled that the country's Agriculture Minister, Stanislaw Kalemba, had overstepped his authority when he issued waivers and licensed 17 slaughterhouses that engage in religious slaughter. In the ruling, which cannot be appealed, the court called the ministry's waivers unlawful and invalidated them from the beginning of next year. The ruling is subject to further legal scrutiny by the EU, whose regulations granting religious waivers to kosher and halal slaughterhouses go into effect on Jan. 1. The regulations are designed to introduce uniform standards when it comes to the treatment of farm animals in the continent. Poland, like every other member state, can seek to opt out of the regulations. Sweden is currently the only country to have imposed a ban on ritual slaughtering. Jewish groups decried the ruling on Wednesday, saying it threatened their religious freedom in a country where Nazi Germany massacred millions of Jews during World War II. "While it may not be their intention, those who seek to proscribe Jewish traditions in general and shechitah [kosher slaughter] in particular are reminding the Jewish community of far darker times," Aryeh Goldberg, of the Rabbinical Center of Europe, said in a statement. "We call on the Polish government to find a legal caveat which will ensure the continuation of shechitah, which is such an important part of Jewish life ... all over the world and particularly in Poland. The European Jewish Association called the ruling "devastating to Jewish welfare and freedom of religion, and said it was planning to issue a letter of protest to the Polish president. Poland was home to Europe's largest Jewish community before the outbreak of war in 1939, but the Holocaust all but wiped it out. Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz and Treblinka were located on Polish soil. The Jewish community in Poland now numbers about 8,000, according to official figures, although community leaders say the real number is higher. Poland's population stands at 37 million. Jewish groups say the kosher slaughtering method does not cause unnecessary suffering to animals. Piotr Kadlcik, head of the Union of Jewish Communities of Poland, said that apart from the substance of the court's ruling, he was troubled by the tone of the debate surrounding it. "The outrageous atmosphere in the Polish media surrounding shechitah reminds me precisely of the similar situation in Poland and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s," he told Reuters. "The style of these media reports was really similar: the [allegations of] disgusting practices and big business for a certain group of people. The tribunal may have felt obliged to react more promptly, given this kind of hue and cry." The Polish dispute echoes a case in neighboring Germany this year. There, a local court in Cologne outlawed circumcision of young boys on medical grounds, sparking an outcry from Jews and Muslims who said it curtailed their religious freedom. The German ruling is likely to be overturned by new legislation. Animal rights activists have also challenged religious slaughter customs in France and the Netherlands.
