well-intended humane society activists in league with antisemitic individuals. In particular, Jonas Søhr, a senior police official, took a particular interest and eventually rose to the leadership of the Norwegian Federation for Animal Protection, while also opposing admission of Jewish refugees during World War I. The animal rights cause was used as a means to attack not just the method of slaughter, but also the community itself. Those opposing the ban included Fridtjof Nansen, but the division on the issue crossed party lines in all mainstream parties, except the Agrarian Party (today, the Centre Party), which was consisten in its opposition to schechita. During the 1890s, protests were raised in the Norwegian press against the practice of shechita, on the grounds that it was cruel to animals. The Jewish community responded to these objections by stating that the method was humane. A committee commissioned on 11 February 1927 consulted numerous experts and visited a slaughterhouse in Copenhagen. Its majority favored a ban and found support in the Department of Agriculture and the parliamentary agriculture committee. Those who opposed a ban spoke of religious tolerance, and also found that schechita was no more inhumane than other slaughter methods. Ingvar Svanberg writes that many of the arguments against shechita were based "on the distrust of 'foreign' habits" and "often contained anti-Semitic elements". C. J. Hambro was one of those most appalled by the antisemitic invective, noting that "where animal rights are protected to an exaggerated extent, it usually is done with the help of human sacrifice". 1929 ban The controversy continued until 1929, when the Norwegian parliament banned the practice of slaughtering animals which have not been first stunned or paralyzed. The ban remains in force today. No forms of religious slaughter are named as being banned in the Norwegian legislation. Norwegian law requires that animals be stunned before being slaughtered, without exception for religious practices, which is incompatible with shechita. The Norwegian Islamic Council, on the other hand, has found that sedation is compatible with halal rules, provided that the animal's heart is still beating at the time of slaughter. Continued debate The former chief rabbi of Norway, Michael Melchior, argued that antisemitism is one motive for the bans: "I won't say this is the only motivation, but it's certainly no coincidence that one of the first things Nazi Germany forbade was kosher slaughter. I also know that during the original