Jewish groups voiced outrage on Friday after Poland’s parliament rejected a government-backed bill that would have allowed slaughterhouses to produce kosher meat, angering Jewish groups who said the decision violated their religious rights.
Lawmakers who opposed the bill said they did so because kosher slaughter is cruel to livestock. Jewish groups said prejudice about their faith – a sensitive subject in a country where occupying Nazis killed millions of Jews – had played a part.
“Populism, superstition and political interests won out,” said Piotr Kadlcik, who heads the Union of Jewish Communities of Poland. “It looks like we’ve made a full circle and are heading back to what happened in Poland and Germany in the 1930s.”
Usually, slaughterhouses stun livestock before killing them, while kosher rites demand an animal is killed by slitting its throat while it is alive and allowing it to bleed to death. The halal meat consumed by observant Muslims is killed in a similar way.
Read More: @ haaretz.com
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