Kosher

[Guest guest]

Kosher Authority Seeks Change in Steer Killings

New York Times

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

December 3, 2004

 

In the wake of accusations of cruelty from an animal

rights group, the world's largest kosher certification

authority announced yesterday that it would ask a

major kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa to change the way

it kills animals.

 

Killings at the plant, AgriProcessors Inc., in

Postville, Iowa, were clandestinely recorded this

summer by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

A videotape showed workers cutting the throats out of

living steers and then dumping the animals on the

floor where they thrashed and bellowed while bleeding

to death.

 

The plant is the country's largest producer of meat

that is glatt kosher, the highest standard of

cleanliness. It is also the only American plant

allowed to export to Israel.

 

Also yesterday, a representative of Israel's chief

rabbinate said AgriProcessors' meat would no longer be

accepted in Israel if the scenes he saw on tape were

standard practice.

 

Bruce Friedrich, a spokesman for the animal rights

group, called the news excellent.

 

No representative of the company could be reached for

comment.

 

Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, the executive vice president

of the Orthodox Union, which certifies more than

600,000 products around the world as kosher, said the

video " raises all sorts of questions. "

 

Rabbi Weinreb said he would ask that the plant stop

letting workers tear the trachea and esophagus out of

animals. He said he found the procedure " especially

inhumane " and " generally unacceptable " but wanted to

investigate how regularly it happened.

 

He said he was also considering asking that animals be

held longer inside the rotating drum where they are

killed. Rabbi Ezra Raful, head of international

supervision of slaughter for the chief rabbinate of

Israel, said yesterday that the steers on the tape

appeared to have been killed correctly by the

slaughterer. But he said his rabbinate preferred that

no one else cut the body until it had bled out, to

avoid the perception that someone else had helped kill

it.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0less Bush, more trees0ooo00o0

The difficult place that the U.S. is in can not be diminished by waging

more wars. The violence done in our name generates more violence

and hatred against us. The solution arises from changing our attitudes

about other people. We need to stop the theft of their resources and

labor and begin to treat others with respect and dignity. RossCannon