VIENNA—On Monday, in a Facebook post, Austria’s Vice Chancellor and Interior Minister Heinz-Christian Strache said that ritual sluaghter or shechita “should generally be prohibited without prior anesthetization, just like in other EU countries.”
“Animals are not objects but creatures worthy of protection that must not be allowed to be tortured,’’ he added.
Strache, who is the leader of the extreme-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) included in his post a link to a newspaper article that lists several European Union member states where ritual slaughter is outlawed, such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Poland.
Strache’s position on the issue is in opposition to that of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who has promised his government will “in no way” limit the Jewish community’s ability to produce and consume kosher meat.
The Austrian law foresees that the slaughter of animals without prior anesthetization is forbidden. However, exceptions are made to produce kosher or halal meat. Religious Jews and Muslims are forbidden from consuming meat of animals that were sedated before they killed.
On Friday, Kurz reiterated his promise to defend religious freedom.
“As head of the Austrian government, I can assure our Jewish fellow citizens that their freedoms and fundamental rights will be upheld and in no way limited,” Kurz said.
One day after posting his controversial post, Strache’s office appeared to relativize it by telling daily Der Standard : “The FPÖ rejects ritual slaughter but for religious reasons, it is to be accepted with a simultaneous or timely anesthesia.’’
But the statement clearly indicated that the party wants to stop what it called the ‘’slaughter tourism.’’ “It cannot be that animals are brought in lorries in onerous live animal transports from Holland or elsewhere to Lower Austria and slaughtered here, in order then to transported back again.”
‘’Butchered meat should only exist for Jews and Muslims living in Austria,” Strache said.
Oskar Deutsch, President of the Jewish Community (IKG) accused the FPÖ” of not only counteracting the line of the federal government but also of spreading ‘’dangerous falsehoods”.
‘’Ritual slaughter is not in conflict with animal welfare, but on the contrary in accordance with it. It is forbidden in Judaism to torture animals, but the FPÖ propaganda simply maintains the opposite.”