David Carter

Wellington May 28 NZPA - Agriculture Minister David Carter has rejected a recommendation from advisers that Jewish ritual slaughter of livestock be exempted from animal welfare rules to allow killing animals without preliminary stunning.

Animal welfare advisers had called for the ritual shechita slaughter to be allowed under the Bill of Rights -- which provides for freedom of religious practice -- but Mr Carter has issued the new code of welfare with a requirement that all animals commercially slaughtered first be stunned.

The issue of pre-stunning sheep and cattle before they are bled out has historically been an issue in some Muslim export markets for livestock killed by halal slaughtermen in New Zealand.

Halal slaughtermen cut the throats of animals electrically stunned in a way that does not kill them, and there have been no submissions from local communities opposing this.

Shechita slaughter requires cutting of the trachea, oesophagus, carotid arteries and jugular veins using a sharp blade so there is no tearing or pausing and allowing the blood to drain out. The animal cannot be stunned or unconscious.

The minister's National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (Nawac) 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 that there was evidence that 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.

However "this preferred position would deny the Jewish community in New Zealand access to locally-grown and commercially-killed kosher meat," the committee said in a report on its code.

It warned that shechita slaughter raised major welfare concerns: sheep, goats and poultry were likely to feel pain for between five and 22 seconds before blood loss caused unconsciousness. Cattle could suffer a minute or more but requiring them to be stunned immediately after having their throat cut would put them on the same level of suffering as the smaller animals.

Nawac advisers were "totally opposed" to the development of an export trade in kosher meat, because that would mean a vast increase in the numbers killed without stunning.

The committee said the Auckland Hebrew Congregation had accepted stunning because it seemed "a little hypocritical" for Jews to buy kosher meat in NZ that had been killed in Australia with post-stunning, but at the same time to seek a different ruling in New Zealand.