If you haven’t already, please read Part One.

The slaughter of animals according to kosher law is called shechita. In contrast with standard humane practice in the U.S., even in factory farms, the animal is not stunned insensate prior to slaughter. The conscious animal’s throat is cut by drawing a very sharp knife across it. Most animal welfare groups object to kosher slaughter because it can take several minutes for the animal to die, since the spinal cord is not severed completely at the first cut.

Jews have historically insisted on compassion for animals. The concept, in Hebrew, is called tsa’ar ba’alei chaim. But it seems to me that the Orthodox rabbis heading the governing bodies of the kosher industry are focused more on the letter of the law and less on its spirit. The goal should be to make the ancient laws of kashrut relevant to modern life (or, more to the point, modern agribusiness).

Kosher slaughter is prohibited in Iceland and Norway, slaughterhouse workers in Germany and Sweden have held strikes in protest against shechita, and the United Kingdom forbids shechita while the animal is lying on its back (known as “shackling and hoisting,” this method is part of the traditional practice of shechita). Temple Grandin has weighed in, too. Dr. Grandin, an animal scientist and leading designer of slaughterhouses, explains that when the cut is done correctly, the animal appears not to feel it. From an animal welfare standpoint, her concern is the stressful and cruel method of restraint used in some plants. Here’s what Dr. Grandin has observed:

• When animals are led quietly into a restraining device in which they stand upright, into a frame that supplies chin and head support, the animals have little or no reaction to the cut. When a shochet uses a rapid cutting stroke under these conditions, 95% of calves collapse almost immediately.
• However, where there is a poorly designed restraining device or the animal is shackled and hoisted, the cattle may react vigorously during the cut, kicking, twisting and occasionally going into spasms.
• The problem is that some rabbinical authorities prefer an inverted restraint method that allows the shochet to cut downward, because they are concerned that an upward cut may violate the Jewish rule forbidding excessive pressure on the knife. There is concern that the animal may push downward on the knife during an upward cut. But observations indicate that just the opposite happens. When bulls are held in a pneumatically powered head restraint in which they can easily move, the animals pull their heads upwards away from the knife during a mis-cut, reducing pressure on the blade.

All of this raises two questions: How often is the cut done incorrectly, and how often are poorly designed or inverted methods of restraint (or shackling and hoisting) used? Good luck finding this information.

Short of personally witnessing the moment of death, it’s impossible to know how the kosher meat on your plate was slaughtered. The same is true for any meat, of course. If we’re concerned about animal welfare, our decision to eat a specific piece of meat comes down to trust. Do we trust the rabbis who assign kosher seals? Do we trust corporations like McDonald’s, whose “humane auditors” are employed by the same companies that manufacture its hamburger patties? Temple Grandin? Animal welfare groups who audit farms and slaughterhouses for humane practices? The farmer at the farmers’ market who describes directly to the customer how she raises her chickens?

Personally, I tend to trust the last three parties listed above. But deciding who to trust can be difficult. How do you know you’ve made the right decision? In this regard, I envy those whose religious faith makes such decisions a lot easier.

Kosher’s Not So Kosher for the Animals – Part One →

(Stay tuned for a piece by my friend Semil Shah on growing up “beyond vegetarian” as a Jain Buddhist. And please feel free to comment on the way this issue relates to your own religion or belief system.)

When I first set the goal of eating only humanely-raised and slaughtered animals, I naively thought that “kosher” would be my Semitic safety net. After all, the word itself has come to mean acceptable, legitimate, and authentic. A kosher seal assures that a set of ethical standards had been followed.

When I went to confirm my reasonable-seeming theory online, the first thing I saw was Jonathan Safran Foer’s If This Is Kosher. I had a feeling the rest of the news wouldn’t be good. I soon learned that kosher meat comes from the same CAFOs and slaughterhouses as all other factory-farmed meat, and that when it comes to animals, all kosher means is that the animal was killed by a pious Jew called a shochet using a rabbi-inspected blade.

The laws of kashrut (kosherness) come from a time before industrialized agriculture and the beef lobby. There were no government subsidies for cheap animal feed back then. There wasn’t even capitalism.

The tentacles of modern agribusiness reach deep. Despite the compassionate intention and humane spirit of the Jewish laws, no standards exist to ensure that kosher slaughter is any less cruel than conventional slaughter. Once any enterprise becomes a large industry, as the kosher food business has, original intentions are more likely to become compromised.

Kosher’s Not So Kosher for the Animals – Part Two →

Here’s a fun thought experiment: Imagine you live on the planet Dearth. You make food wedges called “Healthies” and sell them locally. They’re not just delicious, but they’re better for people and better for Dearth. Healthies become popular in your community and your business grows. Eventually, people from far away start hearing about Healthies.

There is a wide ocean on Dearth. You have two options for how to deliver Healthies across the great big sea to the people who want them.

Choice A is a small yet seaworthy boat that moves slowly and can’t carry much of a load. Its sailors are honest, hardworking people who feel it’s important and honorable to deliver good food. It’s pretty expensive to use their services, though, and you have to load all the boxes yourself.

Choice B is a giant, fast boat sailed by friendly handsome pirates. Their boat can carry huge amounts of food at little cost to you and to the people who want it. They’ll even put your Healthies in pretty packages and tell everyone on Dearth about them. The problem is, they stop at every island along the way to rape and pillage, as pirates do. Also, they’ll only transport your food wedges if they can run your business their way (but the wedges will still be called Healthies, and no one needs to know that pirates transport and distribute them). Also, the pirates are likely to sink every other boat they see. Also, they lie and cheat.

Which boat would you choose?

Back on planet Earth, here’s a chart that shows the corporate relationships that make up Big Organic.

I’m reading Gene Baur’s Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food. It’s like reading an anthology of perverse fables. Here are four of my least favorite:

Fat Animals, Fat Humans: We breed animals to grow large quickly, unnaturally piling on pounds by using hormones (see diagram of a normal chicken and one genetically engineered to pack on breast weight. At 47 days old, chickens have grown so large so fast that that their legs and organs can’t keep up, causing heart attacks, organ failure, and leg deformities. In a sick kind of parallel, consumers, too, are gaining weight at an alarming rate: 34 percent of adults are obese (more than double the percentage in 1980), and 17 percent of kids (triple since 1980).

Causing, Treating, and Fortifying Illnesses In One Easy Step: Antibiotics are fed to farm animals to combat the disease that occurs when animals live in overcrowded, filthy conditions. Humans then ingest these antibiotics, making ourselves more vulnerable to bacterial infections that resist once-normal antibiotic treatment.

Modern Serfdom: Under the control of corporate agribusiness, once-independent farmers have become “contract growers” who are forced to “get big or get out” and who must continually meet the demands of the corporation by upgrading facilities, meeting higher production quotas, etc. The agribusiness lobby presents these choices as free enterprise, and many factory farmers defend their practices. As Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.”

One Hand Taketh: Food is meant to nourish us, but the factory farming system only takes from the earth and the animals, extracting their goodness without replenishing anything.