NZ Shechita scandal: "Carter must go"

So it's not only Michael Danby who is calling for the departure of New Zealand Agriculture Minister David Carter. Here is a recent piece from the NZ left-wing website "The Standard" making the same demand and accusing Carter for  conflict of interests, corruption and breaking the law.

Carter must go


Agriculture Minister David Carter has been exposed abusing his ministerial powers to protect the trade interests of his private investments. Earlier this year, Carter banned Jewish religious slaughtering practices because of perceived risks to the meat trade with Muslim nations after being briefed by companies he owns that take part in the trade.

 The issue was this: both Jewish and Muslim religious practice requires animals that are about to be slaughtered for food to be prayed over and have their necks slit. In an exemption from normal practice, New Zealand has dispensation from some Muslim clerics to stun the animals before halal slaughter. No such exemption exists for animals killed under shechita, the Jewish rules (nothing in this post should be taken as defending shechita or halal, it’s about rule of law).


As I understand it, most of the meat produced in New Zealand is slaughtered according to halal because its easier that way for the meat producers sending meat to the large Muslim markets. In contrast, just 2,000 chickens and 300 sheep a year are slaughtered for the small observant Jewish population.


The right of the Jewish community to continue its practice had been affirmed numerous times in the past decade on human rights grounds.


Meat exporters feared that if Muslim importers became aware that Jews were being allowed to slaughter animals without stunning them while Muslims were being required to make an exemption to their rules and allow stunning, they would perceive it as special treatment for Jews over Muslims and refuse to buy New Zealand meat. This had not happened in all the time the meat exporters had been raising their concerns but still they were worried.


Then along came the new minister, David Carter, who just so happens to own shares in Silver Fern Farms and Alliance Group, both of which export halal meat to the Muslim market and “a 1200ha cattle breeding property in Teddington, a fattening unit at Southbridge and shares in a property in Waiau.” The meat exporters, including ones he part owns, lobbied him on the issue of banning schechita to protect the halal trade.
What Carter should have done when considering the issue of shechita slaughter is say ‘well, I’ve got major financial interests in one of the parties that has skin in this game. There is no way I can make a decision without a perception that my personal interests have coloured my judgment. I have a conflict of interest’. He should have then passed the issue on to his associate minister.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he handled the issue himself and decided to ban shectita.


To compound the conflict of interest, in making his decision Carter broke the rules. The law around animal slaughtering does not allow the minister to consider trade implications. Carter was only allows to consider animal welfare in making his decision. Yet the paper trial clearly shows that Carter did consider trade implications. Not only did he have a conflict of interest that should have barred him from making a decision in the first place, when it came to making the decision, Carter broke the rules to take special note of the consequences for companies he owns.


I’m going to say that again because it’s very important: in making his decision, Carter broke the law and the conflict of interest rules by considering the business implications for companies that he has a financial interest in.


What followed was the Jewish community taking a judicial review of Carter’s decision (where a court decides if the decision was made according to the rules). It appears Carter had lost one case and was about to lose another when he suddenly agreed to drop the ban on shechita. Crown Law won’t say how much the taxpayer has spent trying to defend Carter’s corruption.


I don’t see how a minister who acts with a clear conflict of interest to make a decision that advantages his personal financial interests and breaks the law to do so can be allowed to remain in office.


John Key, according to the report, is ‘relaxed’.


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Michael Danby - battling the "Hellenists" in New Zealand

Michael Danby, by by taking a very public stand on behalf of the Jewish community of New Zealand against an allegedly corrupt Minister, has again confirmed that he is a courageous and fearless champion for the rights of Jews (and indeed other minorities) not only here in Australia - but anywhere in the world where their freedom to practice their religion is under threat.

How fitting that his most recent combat is taking place during Chanukah - the festival that celebrates the victory of the Jewish nation over the Hellenists of old whose intention was להשכיחם תורתך ולהעבירם מחוקי רצונך.



On behalf of Jews everywhere, Michael, we thank you, we salute you and we are proud of you!

Danby said if the allegations against Carter were proven, his decision was "unethical and discriminatory.”

“What kind of minister would sell out his countrymen to foreign powers because he secretly thought it would be of some commercial advantage?" Danby asked. “In Australia he would be driven out of public life. That’s what Prime Minister John Key should do with Minister Carter.”

Carter, who denies the allegations, declared the ban on shechitah on May 27. Jewish leaders filed a lawsuit against Carter that was due to be heard Monday in the High Court in Wellington, but on Nov. 26, lawyers for Carter agreed to allow the kosher slaughter of poultry, averting a potentially embarrassing legal showdown between the Jewish community and the Kiwi government, whose leader, Key, is the son of a Jewish refugee.

No deal has yet been struck on lamb; kosher beef will likely have to be imported from Australia.

The Jewish community argued that the ban was a breach of New Zealand’s Bill of Rights. Shechitah has been carried out in New Zealand since 1843.

Bangladeshi report on New Zealand's Shechitah ban

AJN Watch presents its readers with a very interesting article from "Blitz" - a Bangladashi publication whhose pro-Jewish and Israel stance is something of a rrity in the Muslim world. Its banner states:
"BLITZ - THE ONLY ANTI JIHADIST NEWSPAPER CONFRONTING RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM AND PROMOTING INTERFAITH HARMONY - BLITZ FEARS NONE BUT GOD".

This article claims that the New Zealand authorities have been selling "treif" - which they  describe as "non-kosher [haram]" meat to Muslim countries - a fact that has only been disclosed now after the eruption of the scandal behind the Shechitah ban created by the Agriculture Minister David Carter whose financial interests in a company that exports meat to Muslim countries have only now been exposed.

Jews and Muslims are forbidden to consume blood. If an animal is stunned before slaughter, not all its blood will drain away.

Silver Fern Farms as well as Alliance Group Limited are New Zealand's leading procurers, processors and marketers of sheep, lamb, beef and venison. According to laws in New Zealand, animals are stunned before being killed [kosher and halal slaughter is banned according to law of the country]. Iceland, Norway and Sweden also banned kosher and halal slaughter in the past. Under the newly instated Animal Welfare Commercial Slaughter Code in New Zealand, announced by Agriculture Minister David Carter, commercially killed animals would have to be stunned before slaughter. Under the new law, animals are being given electric shock or injection with the objective of getting it stunned [unconscious]. Subsequently the animal is killed either through slaughter or stabbing. In such case, the meat remains both non-kosher and haram for Jews and Muslims.

Before the Second World War, religious slaughter was tolerated in Europe, except for four countries [Switzerland in 1893, Norway in 1930, Poland and Sweden in 1938]. Religious slaughter without stunning was prohibited in several countries in Europe from 1936 to 1944 under the occupation of Nazi Germany [Germany in 1936, Italy in 1938, then in the majority of the other European countries according to the Nazi Germany occupation progress between 1940 and 1944]. The ritual method of slaughter as practiced in Islam and Judaism has been described as inhumane by animal welfare organizations in the U.K. and the U.S.A., who have stated that it "causes severe suffering to animals."

In 1978, a study incorporating EEG [electroencephalograph] with electrodes surgically implanted on the skull of 17 sheep and 15 calves, and conducted by Wilhelm Schulze et al. at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Germany concluded that "the slaughter in the form of a ritual cut is, if carried out properly, painless in sheep and calves according to EEG recordings and the missing defensive actions" [of the animals] and that "For sheep, there were in part severe reactions both in bloodletting cut and the pain stimuli" when captive bolt stunning [CBS] was used.

In 2003, the Farm Animal Welfare Council [FAWC], an independent advisory group, concluded that the way halal and kosher meat is produced causes severe suffering to animals and should be banned immediately. FAWC argued that cattle required up to two minutes to bleed to death when such means are employed. The Chairperson of FAWC at the time, Judy MacArthur Clark, added, "this is a major incision into the animal and to say that it doesn't suffer is quite ridiculous."

Halal and kosher butchers deny that their method of killing animals is cruel and expressed anger over the FAWC recommendation. In April 2008, the Food and Farming minister in the United Kingdom, Lord Rooker, stated that halal and kosher meat should be labeled when it is put on sale, so that members of the public can decide whether or not they want to buy food from animals that have been bled to death. He was quoted as saying, "I object to the method of slaughter ... my choice as a customer is that I would want to buy meat that has been looked after, and slaughtered in the most humane way possible."

The same years, the French Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fishing has published ASIDCOM's Bibliographical Report on Religious Slaughter and the Welfare of Animals, as a contribution within the framework of a meeting on animals and society organized in the first half of the year 2008. This report quotes scientific papers and French veterinary PhD which support the equality or even possible superiority of religious slaughter to other methods of slaughter. This report quotes in particular the Ph.D work of Dr Pouillaude which concludes by: "religious slaughter would thus be a less stressing mode of slaughter. Conclusions of all the scientific experiments converge towards a firmly supported certainty: properly carried out, religious slaughter is the most humane way because it leads to less trauma to animals to be killed to be consumed for its meat".

For the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Humane Society International, "the animals that are slaughtered according to kosher and halal should be securely restrained, particularly the head and neck, before cutting the throat" as "movements [during slaughter] results in a poor cut, bad bleeding, slow loss of consciousness, if at all, and pain."

At the European Airlines and New Zealand airlines as well as hotels and restaurants are serving non-kosher as well as haram meat to the customers, without informing that the animal was stunned and killed with bolt gun. There is visibly tremendous campaign in United Kingdom against kosher and halal slaughter of animals. Some of the leading politicians in United Kingdom are also campaigning against kosher and halal slaughter and suggesting that halal and kosher meat should be banned in that country. They term kosher and halal slaughter as "barbaric method."

Another report on the accusations agains the Minister:

Click here for more.

And another article about the Shechitah ban in Blitz:

More here.