(UPDATE AT END OF ARTICLE) The following are excerpts from an article in today’s NY Times: An animal rights organization secretly recorded a video last month in the slaughterhouse of a kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa and presented it to the Department of Agriculture, claiming it showed inhumane practices in the killing of cattle.
The brief video, about four minutes long, was recorded on Aug. 13 without the knowledge of managers in the Postville, Iowa, plant of Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest kosher meatpacker, by a representative of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, according to Hannah Schein, investigations specialist for the group, known as PETA.
She said the video showed three instances in which Agriprocessors workers made unauthorized hacking cuts in the necks of still-conscious animals.
Department of Agriculture officials confirmed Thursday that they had examined the PETA video and said inspectors from the department’s Food Safety Inspection Service based at the plant had subsequently witnessed at least one similar violation.
But the inspectors determined the violations were “not egregious,” said the inspection service spokeswoman, Amanda Eamich. She said the plant was currently in full compliance with humane slaughter regulations.
The new video reprises a confrontation between PETA and Agriprocessors in 2004, when a representative of the animal rights group worked undercover in the plant for seven weeks. A video that PETA released then prompted a six-month investigation by the Department of Agriculture, which reported many violations of animal cruelty laws at the plant.
After that report, Agriprocessors changed its slaughter practices, responding to pressure from agriculture officials and from Orthodox Union kosher certification authorities. More recently the company was once again the center of controversy after nearly 400 illegal immigrants were detained at the Postville plant in a raid in May.
In August, PETA sent a representative to work clandestinely in the Postville plant for one week, Ms. Schein said, after about two dozen Orthodox rabbis and leaders visited the plant in late July and praised its kosher slaughter practices as state-of-the-art.
The new PETA video was recorded in the plant’s beef kill room, which is equipped with a bin that turns the animals upside down and exposes their throats. Following Jewish dietary laws, the animals are killed by rabbis specializing in ritual slaughter who make one long cut across the throat. This type of religious slaughter is allowed under exemptions in federal animal cruelty laws.
Under the regulations, a “second cut” in an animal’s throat can be made only in exceptional cases by rabbis or under their supervision. These cuts are sometimes made to speed blood flow from the animals.
Temple Grandin, a livestock handling expert cited by PETA, said the second cuts shown on the August video, which appeared to have been performed by nonreligious workers without rabbis present, would “definitely cause the animal pain.” She called on the Department of Agriculture to install monitoring videos in the kill rooms.
Ms. Eamich, the spokeswoman for the Food Safety Inspection Service, said Agriprocessors had agreed to suspend any second cuts until it received approval from kosher certifying authorities and the Agriculture Department.
A spokesman for Agriprocessors, Menachem Lubinsky, said kosher slaughter was handled by Orthodox Jewish certifying authorities at the plant and company managers were not directly involved. Kosher authorities are working with food inspectors to clarify when the second cut can be used, Mr. Lubinsky said.
UPDATE: STATEMENT OF AGRIPROCESSORS ON PETA CHARGES
Agriprocessors fully complies with federal humane slaughter laws as is monitored by inspectors of the United States Department of Agriculture. All kosher slaughter procedures are under the exclusive direction of the supervising agencies and rabbis who certify the kosher status of the animals, as is provided by law.
Chaim Abraham
Spokesman
(LINK to NY Times)
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9 Responses
If this is true, where were the shochtim and their staff? If there is this lack of supervision, can we trust the overall hashgacha of this facility??
As I stated in a previous post, kosher certification unfortunately is from the time that the knife and the neck of the animal meet. Once this is done according to halacha, the animal is considered kosher slaughtered irregardles if the animal has brain activity or movement.
So maybe the fellows that are proposing hechser tsedek are correct in the matters that they are dealing with, among other things the pre scheita handling of the animal and any post scheita issues that may arise such as in this case. It would be a challenge for the orthodox certifying agencies to expand themselves into these areas.
To “Left Brooklyn”:
Instead of asking here, speak to Rabbi Belsky of the OU!
1. Given’s PETA know biases (against religion in general, against eating meat), it is hard to take them seriously.
2. If their information is accurate, there are kashrus issues which the supervising agency will undoubtedly want to investigate in order to protect the good name of their hecksher (they are suggesting the allegedly kosher slaughter invovled a shochet wounding a cow, which is then killed by a goy). We have a “free market” in kashrus in the US, so if there is a problem, some competitive organization will grab market share by offering a better hecksher, thereby forcing higher standards.
How are representatives of PETA getting onto private property?
They are a dangerous group. Their web site writes justifications for arson.
From their web site: http://www.peta.org/about/faq.asp
“How can you justify the millions of dollars of property damage caused by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF)?”
Throughout history, some people have felt the need to break the law to fight injustice. The Underground Railroad and the French Resistance are examples of movements in which people broke the law in order to answer to a higher morality. The ALF, which is simply the name adopted by people who act illegally in behalf of animal rights, breaks inanimate objects such as stereotaxic devices and decapitators in order to save lives. ALF members burn empty buildings in which animals are tortured and killed. ALF “raids” have given us proof of horrific cruelty that would not have otherwise been discovered or believed and have resulted in criminal charges’ being filed against laboratories for violations of the Animal Welfare Act. Often, ALF raids have been followed by widespread scientific condemnation of the practices occurring in the targeted labs, and some abusive laboratories have been permanently shut down as a result.”
end of quote
Arson is treated by the legal system as murder, because so called “empty” buildings may not be truly empty of human beings. Also, fire can spread.
We must get our act together regarding handling of animals to minimize suffering. However, reigning in fanatical movements that justify arson must be top priority.
to #3: I worked for the OU and it is a dirty business. Unfortunately almost everything has become corrupted by money and profits , which is true of all the major kashrus organizations. Rav Belsky is a posek who comes in for a few hours once a week on friday morning and sits in the smallest dingy office (with an unsightly view of the shaftway) to answer sheilos that are presented to him, key words -presented to him- the rabbis who work in the field are encouraged to not ask questions or complicate matters, just “make it run smooth.” I have since left the kashrus industry and am glad that i dont have to work within it anymore. The head of one of the largest national kashrus organization told me “its tough to be a yaarei shamayim in this business.” I have tried to speak to the executives and poskim who head these kashrus organizations and have been told that even though things are bidieved they are better than the national standards in place years ago. Chevra it is definitely possible to be zahir in kashrus, its just difficult to do so with our distinctly american affluent lifestyle constantly in search for more gashmius.
a) The Peta video clearly shows a cow being turned upside down in a Wienberg pen.
b) There is only one Wienberg pen in use in the United States.
c) That Wienberg pen is at Agriprocessor’s in Postville, IA.
Say what you will, there is no question that the animal was shechted and then a second sawing cut was performed on the cow by a worker who was not a mashgiach (you can tell my the color of his hard hat).
I guess after all “kosher” is not Kosher!!
Once it’s shechted, who cares what happens afterwards? It’s already dead. There’s no “tzedek” in not cutting it after it’s dead!