Jews win relief from pre-stunning rule at meatworks

Jews in New Zealand have won a temporary exemption from a key animal welfare requirement for livestock slaughter that animals being killed must first be stunned.

Representatives of the Jewish community last week filed legal proceedings against Agriculture Minister David Carter and said yesterday a Wellington court had ordered a temporary exemption until the case is decided next year.

Mr Carter announced on May 28 that he was requiring pre-slaughter stunning for all commercial killing of livestock. About 300 lambs and 2000 chickens were commercially slaughtered according to Jewish rite last year.

He later apologised to the 7000-strong Jewish community for any offence caused when he told veterinarians: "We may have upset a relatively small religious minority, and I do appreciate their strong feelings for this issue, but frankly I don't think any animal should suffer in the slaughter process."

Today a representative of the Auckland Hebrew Congregation Trust Board and Wellington Jewish Community Centre said orders by consent in the High Court at Wellington today enable the continued practise of the ritual slaughter, known as shechita, until the lawsuit was decided.

More than half New Zealand's sheep are killed by halal slaughtermen for the Islamic market, by cutting the throats of electrically stunned animals.

But shechita slaughter requires the trachea, oesophagus, carotid arteries and jugular veins to be cut using a sharp blade, to allow the blood to drain out. The animal cannot be stunned or unconscious.

Sheep, goats and poultry are likely to feel pain for between five and 22 seconds before blood loss causes unconsciousness, and welfare experts say cattle could suffer for a minute or more.

The minister's National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee first recommended a dispensation for the kosher, or acceptable to Jews, kill in 2001, but most recently said it would prefer there were no exemptions from the requirement that all animals slaughtered commercially were first stunned.

It said there was evidence calves which simply had their throats cut experienced pain, and it had the "strongly held" view that the cattle, sheep, goats and possibly poultry would experience similar pain.

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, the Sydney-based acting president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, has said the Jewish community will do everything possible to get the requirement for stunning reversed.

Wellington Jewish Council chairman David Zwartz predicted the case would be argued on the grounds that the Bill of Rights allowed for freedom of religious practice, and the requirement for stunning was an infringement of the right of Jews to observe their religion.

Other countries to ban shechita include Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, and the European Parliament earlier this year voted in favour of a new regulation which will lead to kosher meat being labelled as "meat from slaughter without stunning".