A regional politician in the state of Lower Austria defended a plan to limit access to kosher meat, conditioning its sale on permits that would be individually issued to observant Jews.
The Wiener Zeitung daily reported about the draft decree in Lower Austria, one of nine states that make up the federal Republic of Austria. Gottfried Waldhäusl, the cabinet minister in the state government of Lower Austria who is in charge of animal welfare and several other portfolios, defended the plan as necessary “from an animal welfare point of view.”
Oskar Deutsch, the president of the Jewish Community in Vienna – the country’s EJC affiliate – warned that, in practice, the plan would require compiling a list of Jews, which he called “like a negative Aryan clause,” referencing racist laws passed by Nazi Germany and implemented in Austria after its merger with Germany in 1938.
The Wiener Zeitung did not say whether the draft decree extends also to halal meat as well as kosher meat.
Waldhäusl, the animal welfare official from Lower Austria, is the state’s only cabinet minister from the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). The party has had many scandals involving antisemitism by its members and representatives, though its leaders say their party is not antisemitic and will not tolerate expressions of such sentiments in its ranks.
Klaus Schneeberger, the regional leader of the ruling Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) told the ORF broadcaster that the plan will not be implemented. “Of course, nobody will have to register to buy kosher meat. There will be no such thing,” he said.
“In Lower Austria we are not here to provide meat to the Viennese,” Waldhäusl told the daily about his state, which contains vast farmlands and encircles the far smaller state of Vienna, where the vast majority of Austria’s 8,000-odd Jews live.
