Does Cruelty To Animals Matter? A Practical Challenge…

In his attack on PETA and defense of Rubashkin, Rabbi Avi Shafran of Agudath Israel of America writes:

The Jewish religious tradition forbids causing animals unnecessary pain.… 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.

Richard Schwartz of the Jewish Vegetarians of North America, in a response to Rabbi Shafran wants to know why the minutia of kosher laws are observed and safeguarded, while the laws of tzaar baalei hayyim (cruelty to animals) seem to be ignored:

But, why then do Jewish leaders fail to speak out against the many abuses of animals on factory farms? For example, the killing almost immediately after birth of 250 million male chicks [every year] in the U.S. alone at egg-laying hatcheries because they can’t lay eggs and they are not of the breed (broilers) that have been genetically programmed to provide much meat; taking calves from their mothers after one day to raise them as veal; the force feeding of ducks and geese to produce foie gras; raising hens in  spaces so small that they can’t raise even one wing, and then debeaking them to prevent them from pecking other hens in their very crowded, unnatural conditions; and much more.

Of course, Mr. Schwartz's question applies equally well to the OU, KAJ and other kosher supervising agencies as well as to the leaders of Agudath Israel, the RCA, Igud HaRabbonim, Agudas HaRabbonim, etc.

Perhaps our rabbinic leaders will answer this important question for us.

Comments

[John K. Diamond]

As a member of the Advisory Committee of the JVNA, I praise Dr. Richard Schwartz's comments. Our Rabbinic authorities need to answer these concerns directly. I cannot find any Torah source that says cruelty or violence against any living being will be permitted in the Messianic Kingdom that Hashem has promised all of humanity. So permitting cruelty to animals on factory farms and saying that meat from these animals is Kosher can no longer be defended as we are approaching this Kingdom. We need to start setting a proper example now and not to say, as many do, that only when the Moshiach comes, will everything be set right.

[Schnuer]

With the kosher meat industry supplying so many jobs to rabbis , shochetim ,mashgichim and the like (all being rabbis or former rabbinical students) . Do you think any rabbinical Orthodox organization will raise even a wimper about the issue of Zaa baale Chaim.It wiould affect the economic security of hundreds of rabbis in the Us and Israel.
Observing the practical halacha is much easier than observing the spirit of the halacha eg Zaar baale chaim

[Netanel]

My impression was always that "Zaar baale chaim" is an actual Mitzva & not a matter of "favour to animals" in the vein of lifnim meshurat haddin.
Take your idea further ad extremis :
If there was a slight unavoidable hashash for gezel or for chillul shabbat , would you still say that it is not realistic to affect so many people's livelyhood ?

[Stephen Mendelsohn]

BS"D

The hypocricy is even worse than Dr. Richard Schwartz suggests. Many of these kashrut agencies will never certify the kashrut of a catered affair or a cruise liner even though all the food is glatt kosher if there is halachically unacceptable entertainment, such as mixed dancing. That is, these kashrut agencies (as noted elsewhere, many are the strictest of the strict) will involve themselves in policing all kinds of issues having nothing at all to do with the kashrut of the food itself, yet will totally gloss over the weighty ethical issue of tza'ar ba'alei chayim, which in these cases is very much related to the production of food.

Obviously, I am not suggesting that we should be accepting of mixed dancing or other halachically questionable forms of entertainment. But if the kashrut agencies find it fit to police this seemingly unrelated issue, why are they so hypocritically lax in policing the issue of animal cruelty when they should be striving for consistency and be machmir? Is it politics, always wanting to be more "right wing" than thou, and being machmir on tza'ar ba'alei chayim smirks of PC to these folks?

[Lumpy Rutherford]

the killing almost immediately after birth of 250 million male chicks [every year] in the U.S. alone at egg-laying hatcheries

But we are allowed to use animals for our own use. Suppose I have 250 million male chicks. Can I not ground them up into fertilizer if I wish?