after receiving complaints, an investigation by PETA reveals the horrors of kosher killing at the plant run by Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa:
AgriProcessor workers ignore the suffering of cows who are still sensible to pain after having their throats slit by the ritual slaughterer. The animals stagger and slip in blood while their tracheas dangle from their necks.
http://www.goveg.com/feat/agriprocessors/
there are two videos at the above link that show this 'kosher' process as well as this What You Can Do link: http://www.goveg.com/feat/agriprocessors/wycd.asp
below is the New York Times article that appeared yesterday regarding this investigation.
in friendship,
prad
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/national/30cnd-kosh.html
November 30, 2004
Videotapes Show Grisly Scenes at Kosher Slaughterhouse
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
An animal-rights group released grisly undercover videotapes today showing cows
in a major kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa staggering and bellowing in seeming
agony long after their throats were cut.
The plant, run by Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa, is being denounced as
inhumane by the group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and by
several experts on animal science and kosher practice.
But the plant's supervising rabbi said the tapes were "testimony that this is
being done right." And representatives of the Orthodox Union, the leading
organization that certifies kosher products, said that while the pictures were
not pretty, they did not make the case that the slaughterhouse is violating
kosher law.
The plant is the country's largest producer of meat certified as glatt kosher,
the highest standard for cleanliness under kosher law. (Glatt means smooth, or
free of the lung blemishes that might indicate disease.) Employing 600 people
and selling under the popular Aaron's Best brand, it is the only American plant
allowed to export to Israel.
On the 30-minute tape, each animal is placed in a rotating drum so it can be
killed while upside down, as required by Orthodox rabbis in Israel. Immediately
after the shochet, or ritual slaughterer, has slit the throat, another worker
tears open each steer's neck with a hook and pulls out the trachea and esophagus.
The drum rotates, and the steer is dumped on the floor. One after another,
animals with dangling windpipes stand up or try to; in one case, death takes
three minutes.
In most kosher plants, animals are tightly penned while their throats are
slashed, and the organs are not torn; tearing by the shochet is forbidden under
Jewish law. In nonkosher plants, animals by law must be made unconscious before
they are killed.
Virtually all defenders of kosher slaughter, called shechita, insist that the
prescribed rapid cut with a razor-sharp two-foot blade is humane because it
causes instant and painless death. Jewish law also forbids killing injured or
sick animals, so they may not be stunned first, either with clubs as in ancient
times or with air hammers, pistols or electricity today.
Federal law considers properly conducted religious slaughter to be humane, and
so allows Jewish as well as Muslim slaughterhouses to forgo stunning. But
federal rules outlaw leaving animals killed that way conscious "for an extended
period of time."
Rabbi Chaim Kohn, of the Agriprocessors plant, says the cows feel nothing, even
as they struggle on the floor and slamm their heads into walls. "Unconsciousness
and the external behavior of the animal have nothing to do with shechita," he
said. Because the throat-tearing happens after the shochet's cut, he said, it
does not render the animal nonkosher.
Other experts in kosher law were divided on the issue.
Rabbis Menachem Genack and Yisroel Belsky, the chief experts for the Orthodox
Union, which certifies over 600,000 products as kosher - including Aaron's Best
meats - said the killings on the tape, while "gruesome," appeared kosher because
the shochet checked to make sure he had severed both the trachea and esophagus.
Scientific studies, Rabbi Belsky said, found that an animal whose brain had lost
blood pressure when its throat was slit felt nothing and any motions it made
were involuntary.
"The perfect model is the headless chicken running around," said Rabbi Genack.
Both rabbis said they were willing to revisit the plant and study whether
tearing the throat or letting steers thrash on the ground violated Talmudic
proscriptions against cruelty to animals.
The union, they said, prefers a type of pen designed by the American Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in which steers are killed standing up
with their weight supported. They were designed in the 1950's so American kosher
plants could stop killing live animals suspended on chains, which was seen as
both cruel and dangerous to the slaughterer.
But a spokesman for Shechita UK, a British lobbying group that defends ritual
slaughter against the protests of animal-rights activists, said after watching
the tape with a rabbi and a British shochet that he "felt queasy," and added,"I
don't know what that is, but it's not shechita."
The spokesman, Shimon Cohen, said that in Britain an animal must be restrained
for 30 seconds to bleed, and no second cut is allowed. Done correctly, he said,
a shochet's cut must produce instantaneous unconsciousness, so Agriprocessors'
meat could not be considered kosher.
Asked how prominent authorities could disagree over such a fundamental issue, he
replied: "Well, we don't have a pope. You do find rabbis who interpret things in
different ways."
Dr. Temple Grandin, a veterinarian at Colorado State University who designs
humane slaughter plants, viewed the tape last week without knowing the location.
She called it "an atrocious abomination, nothing like I've seen in 30 kosher
plants I've visited here and in England, France, Ireland and Canada."
She said the throat-tearing violated federal anti-cruelty law. "Nothing in the
Humane Slaughter Act says you can start dismembering an animal while it's still
conscious," she said.
A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture, which also certifies the plant,
said it had not received the tapes yet and had no comment.
Rabbi Kohn, of Agriprocessors, said the throat-tearing was done only to speed
bleeding. Recent Federal rules for slaughterhouse inspectors do recognize "the
ritual cut and any additional cut to facilitate bleeding" as different from
skinning or butchering, which is forbidden "until the animal is insensible."
The plant is at the center of a 2000 book, "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in
Heartland America," by Stephen G. Bloom, which described the tensions in the
tiny farming town between residents and Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn who took over
its defunct slaughterhouse in 1987.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known as PETA, posted the tapes at
GoVeg.com today and demanded that the plant be prosecuted for animal cruelty and
decertified by kosher authorities. While the group advocates vegetarianism, it
accepts that shechita can be relatively painless, said Bruce Friedrich, a
spokesman.
Mr. Friedrich said that after two fruitless years of pressing Agriprocessors to
improve conditions, PETA sent a volunteer to the plant with a hidden camera for
seven weeks last summer.
The cameraman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had no trouble being
hired (he was assigned to the sausage department) or filming during his lunch
hours and on days he called in sick.
"I'm glad I did it," said the young man, who became a vegetarian and volunteered
for undercover work two years ago after seeing a PETA videotape. "I wish people
who eat meat could stand where I did and see the things I saw."
Meat from the Agriprocessors plant can end up in any market or restaurant.
Because Jewish law requires that the sciatic nerves and certain fats be cut out,
which tears up the meat until it can only be sold as hamburger, the hindquarters
of virtually all kosher-killed steers are sold as conventional meat.