Spin Machine In High Gear?

Here's how Rubashkin and the OU are spinning the scandal:

… The changes include giving rabbis who perform the slaughtering ritual a stun gun to knock steers unconscious if they continue to thrash about and try to stand after their throats have been slit, company spokesman Mike Thomas said Wednesday.

In such cases, the animal will be removed from the kosher processing line as not kosher, he said.

The Orthodox Union said the thrashing is involuntary movement, common after death.

Controversy over slaughter at the Postville plant erupted last week when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, made public an undercover videotape showing steers walking or bellowing up to three minutes after their throats were slit.…

During slaughter at the plant, rabbis use a 2-foot blade to cut across the neck of the animal, severing the arteries on both sides and the trachea and esophagus. A second cut is made to each artery to ensure rapid blood loss as a second rabbi stands by to monitor.

If done correctly, company officials and rabbinic leaders insist the method is humane, ensuring instant death.

If the shechita is done properly – and it was not properly done on the PETA video – death (defined for our purpose as brain death, a profound, irreversible coma caused by blood loss) should take between 8 to 30 seconds. That means that the vast majority of cattle on that video had their trachea's ripped while still alive and fully sensate.

In other words, our rabbis are intentionally conflating one understanding (there are others) of Halakhic (Jewish law's definition of) death of the animal with actual physical death of the animal (agreed to by the other understandings of Halakhic death of the animal and by science).

The OU's Rabbi Genack told me today that he did not learn of the 'throat-ripping' done at AgriProcessors until the PETA video was released. But he noted that, if he had known of it earlier, he would not have given it much thought, because the animal feels no pain after shechita. When I pointed out to him that the animal's lack of sensation comes from blood loss to the brain, and that blood loss takes some time to happen – a few seconds at best to more than a minute at worst – Rabbi Genack agreed. Yet his – and the OU's position as printed above calls the death of the animal "instant" and misleads the reader, causing one to believe that the animals did not suffer when their throats were ripped out.

And where was that "second rabbi" who was supposed to be watching the 'second cut'? Nowhere in the video, that's for sure. Further, no one I spoke with from the OU or KAJ claimed there was a rabbi monitoring the 'second cut'. So, what's the truth?

I should also add that, unlike my experiences with the OU's Rabbi Belsky and the KAJ's Rabbi Edelstein, Rabbi Genack – who has direct responsibility for the Rubashkin plant – was belligerent, combative and often insulting.  Much the same can also be said of my experience with the KAJ's Rabbi Chaim Kohn, who also carries direct responsibility for the Postville slaughterhouse.

More to come, soon.