The constitutionality of the 1958 Humane Slaughtering Act was defended today against a group that claims the Act’s protection of Jewish ritual_slaughtering methods is unconstitutional, The group of eight tax-payers, the Society for Animal Right and the Committee for a Wall of Separation Between Church and State, filed suit in Federal District Court here yesterday contending that the Act violated the Constitution because it provides “separate treatment and special protection to the dietary preferences of a particular religious group.”
Leo Pfeffer, special counsel for the American Jewish Congress, said today that “There is no doubt of the constitutionality of the provision. The section of the law that defines humane slaughtering to include the Jewish method of slaughter is entirely correct.”
Pfeffer, regarded as a leading authority on church-state separation, drafted the section of the 1958 Act relating to kosher slaughtering methods. He did so on behalf of the Joint Advisory Committee of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council and the Synagogue Council of America. The latter is the umbrella organization of the lay and rabbinic bodies of the three branches of American Judaism.
JEWISH METHOD TERMED CRUEL
The complaining group claimed that the traditional Jewish practice of slaughtering animals and poultry while they are still conscious was “too cruel” and said Jews should not be exempted from the federal law which says that animals should be “rendered insensible to pain by a single blow.”
Pfeffer, on the other hand, contended that “The Humane Slaughtering Act recognizes what has long been known and universally acknowledged–that the Jewish method of slaughter is as humane as, if not more humane, than any other method of slaughtering used anywhere in-the world.” He said that the absence of such a provision from the 1958 law “would cast grave doubts as to its constitutionality.”
An AJ Congress spokesman recalled that exactly one year ago a similar challenge to the constitutionality of the kosher slaughtering provisions was filed in Federal Court here by Henry Mark Holzer, The Joint Advisory Committee announced that it would intervene and Holzer withdrew his suit. The spokesman said the AJ Congress would strongly urge the Joint Advisory Committee to intervene in the current case, probably by filing a friend-of-the-court brief.
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