In response to severe cases of tzaar baalei chaim in places where kaporos were held before Yom Kippur — such as withholding food and water, caging them in miserable conditions and abandoning bird carcasses in the streets and garbage bins — Mayor Rabbi Uri Lupoliansky has issued a directive again this year to boost enforcement and informational campaigns to prevent cruelty to animals.

In recent weeks the Mayor and City Councilman Rabbi Shlomo Rubinstein, who is in charge of public health services, spoke with local rabbonim and figures involved in the matter. After presenting the data, HaRav Eliyohu Shlesinger, the rov of Gilo and the halachic authority for the Religious Council, called on the public to take part only in kaporos at marketplaces overseen by the Municipal Veterinarian Services.

“Complete negligence takes place at the kaporos,” read the notice HaRav Shlesinger issued. “People take chickens and leave them for days at a time without food or water. The chickens are taken from one place where kaporos were already held to another place where they have not been held. Eventually the chickens are thrown in the trash because there’s nobody to take them to be shechted. As a result we are asking the entire public to do kaporos only in places that have been authorized by the municipality and which are under its supervision.”

Inquiries conducted in past years reveal that many of the suppliers of chickens for kaporos do not adhere to the veterinary requirements for transporting and caging poultry birds destined for shechitoh and many are taken from one location to another, deliberately deceiving the public.

(Yechiel Sever for Dei’ah veDibur)