The Lesson Of Shechita-gate

According to Kosher Today, the OU's Rabbi Menachem Genack has written an op-ed article on the Postville Rubashkin Shechita-gate Scandal.

Here is a quote from that article, courtesy of Kosher Today:

[T]he OU continues to vouch for the kashrut, which was never compromised, of all the meat prepared by Agri Processors…As Torah Jews, we are imbued with the teachings which require animals to be rested along with people on the Sabbath and  fed before the people who own them, and that the mother bird must be sent away before her young are taken to save her grief. These and similar statutes make it clear that inhumane treatment of animals is not the Jewish way. Kosher slaughter, by principle, and as performed today in the United States, is humane.  Indeed, as PETA itself has acknowledged, shechita is more humane than the common non-kosher form of shooting the animal in the head with a captive bolt. The Humane Slaughter Act, passed into law after objective research by the United States government, declares shechita to be humane. For Torah observant Jews, it cannot be any other way.

Please note Rabbi Genack's careful parsing of the English language. While Rabbi Genack writes that "the OU continues to vouch for the kashrut, which was never compromised, of all the meat prepared by Agri Processors," he does not write that the OU does the same for humane treatment of animals at AgriProcessors. Instead, he relys on the definition of shechita found in the US Humane Slaughter Act to prove the humaneness of properly done shechita.

But the Humane Slaughter Act defines shechita as the immediate severing of both the carotids and jugulars. Shechita that does not do this – like much of the shechita shown on the PETA video – is thereby by definition inhumane.

But if that shechita is inhumane, if both the carotids and jugulars are left intact by the shochet's cut, how could that shechita be kosher? How could Rabbi Genack write "the OU continues to vouch for the kashrut, which was never compromised, of all the meat prepared by Agri Processors"?

The answer is the US Government definition of shechita – a definition supplied by rabbis in 1905 and repeated by the OU, Agudath Israel and other Orthodox groups for 100 years – is not the actual Halakhic (Jewish legal) definition of shechita.

According to Jewish law, shechita must sever the trachea and esophagus. If a shochet has done this, and no defects are found in the knife or the animal, the animal's meat is kosher.

According to PETA and sources in the food industry, until new food safety laws were passed during the Clinton administration, a USDA inspector regularly oversaw shechita. If the carotids and jugulars were left uncut and the animal showed signs of consciousness, the inspector would act. But, because the new food safety laws mandated so much extra paperwork, the lead inspector who oversaw shechita is now found most often in an office pushing paper.

Writing in the Forward, Rabbi Adam Frank of the Conservative Movement claims to have gone in 1999 with Dr. Temple Grandin to meet with the OU's Rabbi Genack.

The topic of the meeting?

Inhumane treatment of animals at OU-supervised slaughterhouses, including AgriProcessors.

According to Rabbi Frank, Rabbi Genack dismissed their concerns out of hand and "cautioned" them to keep their concerns to themselves.

Rabbi Genack told me that, if he had seen the throat-ripping at AgriProcessors take place, he would not have been concerned and would not have stopped that practice. For Rabbi Genack, all concerns of mistreatment of animals ended as the shochet's knife touched the animal's neck.

Perhaps the lesson from this should be the following:

The OU, the KAJ and many other kosher supervising agencies can not be relied on to supervise tzaar baalei hayyim (animal mistreatment) issues. For that, the Jewish community must rely, not on our rabbis, but on activist groups like PETA.

A sad lesson, indeed.

Comments

[FNU LNU]

The rabbis are right that PETA is a very flawed entity; their own inability to admit errors will needlessly grant those groups greater authority, both in the general public and those among the frum community that paid attention to this issue.

Before PETA were the nuts who compared killing Jews to eating chicken. They are still that but also the group whose zeal helped make shechita better.

By contrast, rabbinic inaction in this issue, alternated with action coupled with terminological doublespeak so that reforms are not seen as admitting error, should yet again be seen as rabbinical irresponsibility. Such social irresponsibility so often seems the rule and not the exception.

[Alan Scott Belsky]

The virtue of Shechita has always been described as the humanity with which the animal is slaughtered. The need for Shechita is traditionally described together with the need for tsa'ar ba'alei chayim. You described the problem very acutely when you pointed out that the halachot of Shechita do *not* actually mandate a slaughter which would maximize the comfort of the animal. Why is this?

I believe the confusion came from the days before a modern scientific understanding of the brain. Shochets noticed that when done properly (cutting the trachea and esophagus), Shechita usually led to a quick, comfortable death for the animal -- but no one realized that this was because such a thorough slice through the creature's neck generally leads to a slice through the arteries bringing blood to the brain! The animal doesn't feel the knife because it is so sharp, its blood drains out of its brain, and the animal dies before it realizes it.

We arrive at a problem -- we trumpet Shechita as humane, yet we paskin that inhumane slaughter can be valid shechita. How to solve it?

Clearly (to me at least) this is an issue the Orthodox community needs to be machmir on. You don't need a Sanhedrin to enact an extra stringency on Shechita methods that calls for cutting the arteries along with the "2 tubes" of halachic literature.

I believe this would be a simple, elegant, and moral solution, with no associated tircha detsibur problem, and a perfect way of keeping the "letter of the law" in line with the "spirit of the law".

Unfortunately, nobody ever looked extra frum because they were machmir on tsa'ar ba'alei chayim. Therefore, our contemporary Orthodox culture being what it is, I doubt any solution to this moral problem will even be taken seriously. Especially when people like Rav Shafran's official response to the PETA video was to call them anti-semites. Sometimes I wonder, if Hakadosh Baruch Hu is still up there paying attention, if a new churban (God forbid) would even be enough to deal with our contemporary sins as a community.

[Lumpy's Right]

ASB,

Perhaps we should change many other Mitzvos that the gentiles criticize. We prohibit homosexual acts, which aren't PC to criticize. Perhaps we could be "Machmir" and allow gay unions.

Your use of the term "inhumane" is reprehensible. If the Torah says that the animal is kosher, then it's kosher. You feel that we need to conduct ourselves in a manner that satifies gentiles. Problem is, once we start modifying in order to satisfy them, there is no end to it. It all boils down to who is in control of our Kashrus; us or them? By suggesting that we make ANY concessions to outsiders (particularly outsiders that consider any use of animals as unethical) you begin the first steps of a very dangerous journey toward other "streams" of Yiddishkeit.

[Alan Scott]

I'm sorry, but concern for Tsa'ar Ba'alei Chayim is a chiyuv. Just because you've asociated true chesed and compassion in your mind with non-Jews, 't make it that it wasn't our avot and nevi'im who were the First proponents of the idea. Who came up with the idea all of a sudden that being a good person was treif??
We should celebrate the fact that non-Jewish society has adopted these ideals from us after 3000 years, and not turn our backs on the Torah because we'd rather hear all our mussar from people who "look" more frum -- as if frum-ness ever had anything to do with any more than mitsvot of the most superficial type.
It's the easiest thing in the world to adopt food taboos or a dress code or holiday observances - especially when it comes along with a feeling of self-righteousnessa nd superiority. IT's a much harder thing, apparently, to care about all the other mitsvot as well - you know, the ones that don't grab you more shidduch points on the NYC list.
There are other mitsvot out there! And your analogy with gay rights is absurd. Permitting gay unions would involve a lot more Sandhedric re-writing that just mandating that Jews live up to our own historic standards. When will people get sick of us calling ourselves "Rachamaniyim bnei rachmaniyim" when its so obvious we're not? The Gemara casts doubt on the Jewish geneaology of people who act without rachamim. Think about the implications.

[Alan Scott]

Dude, *this* is the point you're missing:

"Jewish Values" are not determined by the opposite of whatever "the goyim" think. (or whatever you've decided "the goyim" think - "goyim" like that Jewish Vegetarians groups)

Jewish values are determined by the Torah and our mesorah, and the combined literature of our tradition has a lot to say about how we should be treating people we have power over, and animals we have power over, and even the land we have power over -- because it all belongs to Ha kadosh baruch hu anyway. The (non-Jewish) idea of "I do what I want" doesn't apply.