A bill considered potentially harmful to shechitah was withdrawn from the current session of the Missouri General Assembly after a delegation from the Jewish communities of St. Louis and Kansas City appeared here to oppose it even though the present version would have exempted ritual slaughter from its restrictions.
The bill, introduced by Rep. R.D. Rodgers, and promoted by the Humane Society of Missouri and a group known as the “Friends of Animals,” would have restricted the slaughter of livestock to those methods rendering the animal insensible to pain by “mechanical, electrical, chemical or other means.” It specifically exempted methods of slaughtering “in accordance with ritual requirements of the Jewish faith.”
Rep. Rodgers withdrew the bill after Rabbi Maurice D. Solomon, president of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Kansas City, said that it offered a “benign favor to the Jewish faith” by a “liberal-minded party of legislators, who are in no position to assure the Jewish community that their possible successors would also be so disposed.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
