Leaders of the major Orthodox Jewish organizations pledged to work together “to do everything in their power to protect schechita (kosher slaughter) in the U.S.,” at a special session on Friday of the 86th National Convention of Agudath Israel of America.
Avi Shafran, the director of Public Affairs for the organization, said that it was important “to recognize kashrus for what it is and what it is not.” He was referring to the attempts by conservative rabbis to add a Hekhsher Tzedek, verifying that production met all requirements in the treatment of workers, animals and the environment, which was strongly repudiated by the organization’s Council of Torah Sages.
Rabbi Moshe Elefant, the COO of the Kashrus Division of the Orthodox Union (OU) agreed, but added that kashrus agencies must still be sensitive to those concerns even outside of the context of kosher supervision. Rabbi Elefant warned that despite meat shortages, kashrus agencies “must adhere to the highest standards of kashrus.”
Rabbi Moshe Edelstein, Kashrus Administrator of K’hal Adas Jeshurun (KAJ), in reviewing the history of schechita in the U.S., singled out PETA for its opposition to the slaughter of all animals, including schechita. But the rabbi suggested dialogue with PETA to see if kashrus officials can possibly address some of their concerns without affecting the integrity of schechita.
Rabbi Shafran also took issue with the media coverage of the events at Agriprocessors, calling it “overblown and totally out of proportion.” He particularly singled out a major national newspaper that referred to the Postville plant of Agri as a “jungle.”
(Source: Kosher Today)
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14 Responses
PETA advocates vegetarianism and is equally against the consumption of animal products such as milk, as well as animal ingredients in consumer products, as well as the use of animals for any kind of testing. Yes, they have a radical view, but unless America outlaws eating meat, the only worry we have is that shechita is performed properly. PETA has caught and been instrumental in correcting infractions performed in kosher slaughter houses. For that reason, and working to ban animal testing, I am grateful to PETA.
Healthy to hear and listen to different points of view on the issue of kashrus supervision. If we can put all these concerns together without pointing fingers — we will be successful.
Yasher koach to Rabbi Shafran. Thank G-d he is not blinded by media reports re: Agri. However, I feel that there should be a much stronger stance supporting Rubashkin not just from Agudas Yisroel, but other Jewish organizations.
To #1 – so you must be such a Talmid Chacham that you know how shechita is performed properly. I would not be surprised that you are also a Peta member.
‘… it was important “to recognize kashrus for what it is and what it is not.”’
I’ve been going ’round and ’round about this statement. So I have questions: Is shechita valid on a stolen animal? Can someone certify the shechita on a stolen animal? Can someone gain benefit from selling or buying kosher meat from a stolen animal?
I ask these questions because a valid shechita enables someone to gain extra profit from the sale of kosher meat over the sale of non-kosher meat. That financial incentive can skew a person’s entire outlook and practice.
Working together we can not only protect ourselves but we can accomplish so much more.
Agudah together with the OU together with KAJ etc…is exactly the recipe for success.
There is no question that Kashrus and shechitah in general is under attack- to argue is naive.
The question is how best can we protect ourselves?
1-Kashrus organizations must be strengthened and “Hechsher Tzedek” though its intentions may be laudible, must and will be ignored by the Kosher eating, Halocha keeping Jewish public
2-Organizations like the OU,Agudah and Young Israel must be supported both financially and publicly.These are our organizations that advocate and defend our rights in the political, public and private arenas. If and when they ask for public support, emails, calls, faxes etc… WE MUST do our part!
Do not underestimate the power of political clout. We must vote!
3- The public should always be on the lookout for any attacks on our community and bring them to the attention of the various PR people in these organizations.Every attack must be met with a response.
4- Peta is an organization that will not rest until Shchita is destroyed- know the enemy and dont underestimate it.
The bottom line is- United we win, divided we fail.
#3, do not insult someone for difference of opinion otherwise you are worthy of the same tone you hurl in my direction. It is a fact that in Uruguay, specifically, shabby shechita was performed, caught on tape, acknowledged by the Rabbi, and corrected. Provided you believe what I say, dont you think in that incident it was a good thing? More power to some of PETA’s efforts even if it creates dissonance in how you were conditioned to think.
veryintresting, while PETA may have accidentally done some good, they are out to destroy shechita itself. if CH”V they do, how “grateful” will you be then?!
#7, I do not believe PETA is out to destroy shechita itself. If you can show me where this is the case, then I will tell you how my view of PETA will change.
#8, PETA is against killing animals, and shechitah kills animals. therefore, i assume PETA wants to stop shechitah for once and for all.
#8, it seems apparent from observing PETA’s actions that they reserve a special disdain for shechita, possibly because shechita is said to be more humane, and that just rubs them the wrong way. Why would they expend so much energy attacking Agri, when the “standard” method for slaughter in other plants is far more cruel? Also, I think the Jewish world’s objection to PETA is not due to their advocation of vegetarianism, but to their equation of humanity and animals… they truly do not differentiate, and that is dangerous. Take, for example, their letter to the PA following a bombing of Jews, which objected not to the bombing, but to their use of a donkey in the attack! They had no objection to the killing of Jews, only the donkey! Also take their “Holocaust on your plate” campaign, which featured pictures of chicken houses alongside concentration camp survivors. How vile! The cornerstone of Nazi propaganda was the equation of Jews with animals…so why shouldn’t we be enraged that PETA equates us with animals again?
Good Shabbos!
To #7
You are insulting yourself by supporting PETA and their shennigans. Don’t be so naive. PETA wants to destroy shechita, and they will use any means to destroy it, even if it means destroying a whole community (The people of Postville are suffering, and they need our support. As a matter of fact in my community we are setting up a Chanukah gift drive.)
Wake up and unite with yidden not with people or organizations that want to destroy you and your way life.
#9 Read and weep:
If you require more- please dont waste our time google PETA and get back to us.The burdon of proof is on you not us . We knoe exactly what PETA is all about.
The PETA Principle
by Rabbi Avi Shafran
Now that the blood has settled, a clearer perspective might be had about the recent brouhaha over shechita, or Jewish ritual slaughter, at a meat-processing plant in Iowa.
Yes, the beginning of that sentence was meant to jar. Blood and attendant unpleasantness are part and parcel of the process of turning livestock into meat, and most people are content to interact only with the final product.
Some, though, choose not to do even that. They include people who are repulsed by the thought of eating what was once alive, and others who feel that meat consumption is a wasteful use of natural resources. Yet others shun meat for health or religious reasons.
And then there are the folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, who object to all killing of animals because, as Ingrid Newkirk, the group’s co-founder and president, famously put it, “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy” – because of their belief, in other words, that animals are no different from humans.
The Jewish religious tradition forbids causing animals unnecessary pain. And there are observant Jews who are vegetarians; our tradition even teaches that the first man and woman – indeed all of humanity until Noah – were divinely forbidden to eat meat. But the Jewish faith expressly permits the killing of animals for human needs, including food. Which animals may be eaten and how to dispatch them are topics dealt with at considerable length in Jewish legal literature.
Indeed, the “PETA Principle,” the moral equating of animals and humans, is an affront to the very essence of Jewish belief, which exalts the human being, alone among G-d’s creations, as, among other things, the possessor of free will, a being capable of choosing to do good or bad. That distinction is introduced in Genesis, where the first man is commanded to “rule over” the animal world.
The notion that humans are mere animals can lead to ethical obscenities, like PETA’s appeal to the director of the federal penitentiary where Timothy McVeigh was awaiting execution, that the mass murderer not be served meat so that he “not be allowed to take even one more life.” Or the group’s lodging of a protest with Yasir Arafat over a terrorist attack because the donkey carrying the explosives detonated in the attack was killed. Or its “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign, comparing the killing of chickens and cows to the murder of Jewish men, women and children. Or solemn declarations like Ms. Newkirk’s that “Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses.”
And so when PETA launched a media blitz several weeks ago, sending scores of journalists and others copies of surreptitiously filmed and carefully edited videotapes of animals being slaughtered at the AgriProcessors plant in Postville, Iowa – the largest producer of “glatt” – or highest-standard – kosher meat in the nation – the immediate reaction on the part of some Jewish organizations and many of those in the kosher food industry was understandably negative.
The video, to be sure, was disturbing. Although the PETA “mole” who secretly recorded the film likely witnessed thousands of unremarkable slaughters during his months on the job, the edited film showed a number of animals that seemed conscious after the act of shechita. In one case, an animal even righted itself and took several steps before collapsing.
Every method of animal slaughter yields a small percentage of such unfortunate results, when some degree of consciousness persists longer than it should. What PETA claims, though, is that what was depicted on its edited video of operations at the Iowa plant represents fully a quarter of the animals slaughtered over the seven-week period during which the video was made.
There is reason to be skeptical about this claim. A subsequent visit to the plant by Dr. I.M. Levinger, a veterinary surgeon and physiologist, yielded his testimony that, of the as many as 150 animals he saw slaughtered over the course of his two-day visit, only a single cow exhibited any conscious activity after shechita.
What is more, USDA inspectors are typically present on the killing floor during animal slaughter, to ensure that the process complies with federal standards. The inspectors present at the Postville plant during the period PETA compiled the images in its video presumably saw the entire picture, and never complained about any inordinately high number of post-slaughter displays of consciousness. A high-level USDA official, for that matter, visited the plant after PETA released its video to personally observe the allegedly inhumane practices and take appropriate action; what he saw apparently persuaded him that there was no need to shut down the plant or alter its basic practices.
Likewise, top officials from the kashrut organizations that certify AgriProcessors’ meat visited the plant to monitor the shechita process and found that signs of post-slaughter consciousness were extremely rare. Indeed, Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture, Patty Judge, who had initially expressed her deep chagrin after watching PETA’s video – even calling for a federal investigation – concluded, after a personal visit to the plant, that the shechita there “…was humane… and there was absolutely no problem with the way they [the animals] were handled.”
Those personal observations confirm what scientific theory would have predicted: that the incidence of displays of post-slaughter consciousness is more rare in cases of shechita than when non-kosher methods of slaughter are employed. That is because, as Dr. S.D. Rosen, MA, MD, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London, noted earlier this year in a monograph in the Veterinary Record, studies have shown that after the cutting of the trachea, esophagus and carotid arteries – the shechita process in essence – an animal’s consciousness is lost within approximately two seconds, and irreversibly.
The evidence would appear to suggest, therefore, that PETA is grossly exaggerating the frequency of post-shechita signs of consciousness at the Iowa plant. Perhaps it should not be surprising that PETA’s 25% figure differs so dramatically from what others have seen. Because, while the group’s concern that animals not be caused unnecessary pain is commendable, PETA also has an ultimate, and openly declared, goal: to stop people from eating meat. And so, if a bit of dissembling is necessary to move in that direction, well… wouldn’t you stretch the truth to save Jews from Nazis?
Precision, though, is not the only thing PETA seems prepared to sacrifice in order to achieve its goal. Our nation’s commitment to religious liberty, in PETA’s eyes, is eminently expendable as well.
Even though the Iowa plant has discontinued a bleeding-facilitating arterial cut that PETA deemed a “dismemberment” of live animals, the animal rights group is now demanding, among other things, that U.S. government regulations regarding animal slaughter be changed in fundamental ways and that the type of restraining pen required by some decisors of Jewish law be outlawed. These are not minor points; they touch, and not gently, upon the issue of rabbinic authority and religious autonomy. And that game is zero-sum: What constitutes proper animal-slaughter methods for observant American Jews will necessarily be determined in the future either by rabbis or by advocates for animal-rights.
Shechita was attacked and outlawed by the Nazis when they came to power in Germany. Today, animal rights activists have succeeded in banning it in several European and Scandinavian countries. If PETA’s misleading campaign is not seen for the partisan salvo it is, our own country may be next.
There should be no capitulation to PETA or any meeting with them whatsoever as it gives legitimacy to their bogus and ultimately anti-semitic claims.
veryinteresting, i believe we have proven beyond any doubt that PETA is indeed out to destroy shechitah. Now please tell me “how my view of PETA will change”.