Polish agricultural organizations have reacted angrily to proposals from leading politicians for a new animal welfare law that prohibits the breeding of fur animals, as well as a ban on unstunned slaughter. They fear the collapse of Poland’s poultry exports.
This week, former president Jarosław Kaczyński, now party chairman of Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), said the government plans to introduce a modern animal welfare law.
The proposal is part of a broader package dedicated to animal rights, an issue passionately embraced especially by the youth wing of Poland’s right-wing nationalist government. This also includes restrictions on keeping circus animals, regulations on animal shelter management, and animal transport. The Polish agricultural sector criticizes the ruling party for not mentioning any of this during last year’s parliamentary elections and the recent presidential election.
The prospect of a sudden closure of an export market for kosher meat animals valued at $1.5 billion per year has raised alarm bells this week in the Polish countryside.
“According to our estimates, one in five poultry animals slaughtered here is done so according to halal or kosher methods, which also accounts for 40 percent of Poland’s poultry meat exports,” stated a joint declaration from five associations in the poultry industry. “After the introduction of the ban, the Polish poultry industry could collapse overnight,” the statement continued.
In a separate statement, the Polish beef sector council argued that the proposed restrictions on ritual slaughter would worsen conditions for animals. “Limiting religious slaughter will in no way improve the fate of animals, and will even worsen it, because animals that cannot be slaughtered in Poland will have to be transported hundreds of kilometers to be killed outside Poland,” said Polish cattle farmers.
Such ideas are harmful to the development of Polish agriculture, the driving force of the Polish economy, it was said. Agricultural organizations warn that the legislation would deliver a new critical blow to an industry already recovering from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
The same body criticized the government for focusing on ritual slaughter while doing little to combat the ongoing outbreaks of swine fever that have affected pig farmers in the country.