COMMENTARY ON JUDGMENT OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL TRIBUNAL OF 10 DECEMBER 2014, K 52/13

This gloss is critical and raises issues related to limiting the protection of animal rights to their humane treatment, caring for their welfare, by completely allowing the ritual slaughter of animals, without their prior stunning, as is the case in Judaic or Muslim religious rites. Over the course of almost 20 years, as many as five legislative changes have been made in Poland in this regard, therefore the issue of the ritual of killing animals without first depriving them of consciousness is a very important ethical and moral problem. The long-awaited judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal on the admissibility of slaughtering animals for religious purposes was to put an end to this. In the voted judgment, the Constitutional Tribunal stated that the constitutional freedom to manifest religion - that is, the admissibility of ritual slaughter of animals - is superior to the protection of animal rights and does not pose a threat to public morality. Beginning with the scope of the applicant’s legitimacy, i.e. its legitimacy and exceeding the limits of the demands, the assessment of the weighing of competing constitutional values, the failure to develop a coherent and uniform position in the case in question, the adoption of erroneous assumptions, inaccuracies, it can be clearly stated that the judgment and (reference number K 52/13) does not solve the problem of ritual slaughter of animals in Poland, and introduces even greater chaos and disorder to the current legal system.