Last night, I saw a news story that was run by a NY news site on Yom Kippur about kapparos. It showed videos of the chickens being slaughtered, then dumped into garbage bags. The garbage bags sat out in the sun without refrigeration for hours – often overnight. The next day, many of the garbage bags, without even being looked at, were just thrown into the garbage truck when it came to do the regular pickup. The people involved in the kapparos helped the workers get the bags into the truck.
Is this really what we want to be doing? As usual, I did kapparos with money this year. Immediately after, I donated money to tzedakah. Now I know that the money I gave is going straight to tzedakah, and not to line the pockets of some unscrupulous people.