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Statement of Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation, Bethesda, MDSo much for avoiding tza’ar ba’alei chayim, “causing pain to living creatures,” as mandated in Jewish law. The abuses in this ostensibly “kosher” slaughterhouse are sickening, but perhaps not altogether surprising; the Postville butchers are perhaps different in degree, but not in kind, from their colleagues throughout today’s kosher industry.Kashrut is a system designed to certify the spiritual, moral, and legal “acceptability” of our food. But that system breaks down in the face of high demand, ready supply, and the profit motive, and factory farming of livestock. The shechita (ritual slaughterer) of a less affluent and less populous era—when animals were infrequently killed, singly, with sensitivity—has nothing to do with today’s kosher marketplace. What may have once made sense, now can no longer be justified. We know too much about what “kosher” animal commerce (to say nothing of the larger industry) does to the animals, to the bodies and souls and consciences of those who eat them, and to the earth. Let us stop defending a system which normalizes the criminal abuse of animals and criminal waste of resources. And let those who consume its tortured products stop being complicit in that system. Let us realize that today, in the vast majority of cases, “kosher meat” is an oxymoron. |
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