Agriculture ministers will continue discussions over ritual slaughter practices, after meeting about the issue in Melbourne.
The Primary Industries Ministerial Council members arrived at the meeting to be greeted by a protest of 200 people, organized by Animals Australia.
Animal welfare groups say about 14 abattoirs, in NSW, Victoria and South Australia have been exempted from having to stun livestock during slaughter, so ritual kosher or halal killing can be done.
They want all Australian abattoirs to be required to stun animals.
But it seems the protest failed to move the Ministerial Council to make a decision, with a communique from the event explaining that “officials have been asked to continue discussions with the religious groups in order to settle an applicable risk management framework.”
The RSPCA has labelled the “non-decision” as “completely unacceptable”.
“There is no excuse for delaying this decision,” RSPCA Australia scientific officer, Melina Tenson, said.
But the Jewish community has rejected concerns about ritual sluaghter without stunning.
Peter Wertheim, from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, says scientific evidence attests to the fact that kosher slaughter is humane.
He says mandatory stunning would make kosher killing illegal in Australia.
“And it would effectively mean that people in our community that are observent and keep the kosher rules would be prohibited from eating meat that has been prepared in a way that violates the rules of kashrut, which is the Hebrew word for the religious laws that apply in this case.”
we want moshiach now
‘There’ was no ‘testamony.’
The testimony might have been theirs.
even if they ban it we would have mesiras nefesh(to a certin extent) to shecht anyway
It was a wise decision of collive to let us know about the kosh
meat situation in Australia. Sweden and Norway ban Shechitah
and the Netherlands is considering a ban. We must let these
otherwise democratic countries know that a shechitah ban is a tremendous inconvience to their Jewish comminiyies’
P.G.U.
Aussies have been trying for 30 years to outlaw shechita. Rabbis YD Groner and Ch Gutnick A”H were instrumental then in blocking the ban. There testamony was incorporated to defend Shechita in the rest of the UK