Kosher Slaughter:
Should Shackling and Hoisting Be Permitted?

Rabbi Adam Frank

Letter to the Chief Rabbis of Israel
January 24, 2008

Dear Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar,

The matter of Tsa'ar Ba'alei Chaim is a mitzvah that is not disputed. Dispute lies in the definition of the suffering prohibited, and conversely permitted, to inflict upon an animal. In light of the recent public exposure of gruesome animal handling systems and treatment of animals involved in the kosher slaughter process both in the United States and in kosher slaughter facilities in South America, I write to ask for your opinion of what constitutes a violation of Tsa'ar Ba'alei Chaim? Also and more specifically, since less painful and more humane methods of animal restraint and treatment exist and are used in the kosher slaughter process, is the Shackling & Hoisting of a conscious animal an unnecessarily cruel practice, thus defining it as prohibited under Jewish law?

Rabbi Adam Frank
Congregation Moreshet Yisrael
Jerusalem

Rabbi Frank's position on the matter is as follows:

Since more humane and less cruel animal handling systems are approved, effective and currently employed during kosher slaughter, the gruesome method of shackling and hoisting animals during the kosher slaughter process is unnecessary, thus, rendering this method of restraint a violation of the Jewish precept of Tsa'ar Ba'alei Chaim — the prohibition to unnecessarily inflict pain and suffering on an animal. I call on the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and all shechitah supervising institutions worldwide to act to eliminate this unnecessarily cruel method of restraining animals during the kosher slaughter process.

Israel's Kosher Meat and the South American Problem

Op-Ed Report by Rabbi Frank for the Israeli Press

A recent undercover investigation into slaughterhouse practices in South America has revealed the heinous use of the animal restraint method known as shackling and hoisting during the kosher slaughter process. We in Israel have no reason to feel immune from responsibility for these barbaric practices, as South America is the largest source of kosher beef imports into Israel. Additionally, South America is the largest offshore supplier of kosher meat to the United States. Both the Israeli Rabbinate and The Orthodox Union (OU) in the U.S. explicitly endorse these methods by providing their kosher authorizations to the resulting meat.

Shackling and hoisting is the brutal and outdated technique of chaining and suspending in midair a fully conscious adult cow by its rear leg. The problems associated with this method include the animal's scientifically measured hyper-stress levels, tearing of muscle tissue, tendons, and skin, the compression of internal organs by the immense weight of the cow's mass on the organs, and more. None of these problems affect the technical halakhic status of the kashut (fitness) of an animal's physical condition. Due to the high incidence of worker and animal injury, this method of restraint is longer practiced in the United States. The advent of safer and more humane animal handling systems encouraged kosher slaughter in North America to abandon the practice years ago.

As early as 1998, a reporter for a leading Israeli newspaper gave this eye-witness account of the process:

One of the local workers grabs a back leg of the bull and lashes it to an iron chain. The door is raised again and the bull is yanked violently upward by the chain attached to his back leg. The animal is now dangling in the air — its immense weight held by one foot, its head down. A second worker locks the head into a crescent-shaped device that has been grafted onto a long iron rod. The slaughterers advance....The [cut] is dazzlingly swift, a second or two, one cut forward and another backward across the bull's neck. It is done.

 

Immediately the two animals, their bodies jerking convulsively, are lifted upward with the iron chain, unleashing a torrent or blood. Wasting no time, the slaughterers and the workers turn to the...Box, where the next two steers are already waiting....Their bellowing intensifies.

 

The slaughtered animals, by now dangling from large hooks, are pulled up to the second floor, where workers attach them to a gigantic machine. A quick cut loosens a flap of skin, which is inserted into the machine and pulled by two rollers until the animal is completely skinless.

 

It is all done with astonishing speed....By this method, more than 100 steers are slaughtered within an hour, 50 per Box, 27 seconds on average for each....

 

Tubol, who is my guide in the meat factory, assures me that "this is an advanced plant, compared with others where kosher slaughter is done." (Ha'aretz Magazine, Sept. 25, 1998, by Yossi Bar-Moha)

Animal science data reports that a cow killed by means of a valid kosher slaughter cut loses consciousness between 8 and 60 seconds after the cut is made. According to the above testimony, after the cut is made the animal is immediately moved to the stage of flaying (removing the skin), and a cow is processed every 27 seconds. Many of these animals are being skinned while still conscious — a fact that does not violate the laws of kosher slaughter, but tramples upon the laws of ethical behavior toward a living creature.

The leading authority in animal handling systems, Dr. Temple Grandin, is on record as saying that, when implemented responsibly, kosher slaughter is the surest pain-minimizing way to industrially slaughter animals. This opinion is due to the meticulous precision of the shochet to make a proper cut at the time of death — an imprecise cut means the animal becomes a treifa, that is, non-kosher. However, Dr. Grandin holds that by employing these crude handling systems that show no regard for animal welfare, kosher slaughter is now a leading perpetrator in the vile abuse of animals in the food production industry.

What does Jewish law have to say about animal welfare? An emphatic opinion is that of Shulchan Arukh commentator the Yad Ephraim (Rav Ephraim Zalman Margalit): "It is necessary to warn slaughterers on this matter...[that the slaughter of a chicken in front of other chickens waiting to be slaughtered] is not okay as it entails tsa'ar ba'alei chaim...and there is no greater form of tsa'ar ba'alei chaim" (Yoreh Deah 36:14). That is, the law against unnecessary infliction of pain to animals applies not only to the animals' physical well being, but also to the animals' emotional well being. In his gloss on the Shulchan Arukh, Rabbi Moshe Isserles (Rema) says: "Anything [treatment of an animal] necessary for medical or other purposes is not a matter of tsa'ar ba'alei chaim. Therefore, it is permitted to pluck the feathers from live geese; nevertheless the world abstains from such for it is cruelty" (Even HaEzer 5:14). Here, even the Rema who defines the proscription against animal mistreatment as solely a law against human sadism and upon whose opinion on the matter most modern arbiters of Jewish law hold says that cruelty — even if technically permitted — should be avoided.

If better systems exist for protecting the welfare of workers and animals, why do the Israeli and U.S. authorities condone their continued systematic abuse in South America? Does the one-time cost of the refined equipment — costs that every Western abattoir incurs — compare to saving the limbs, eyes, and teeth of South American workers? Does the one-time cost of the refined equipment — costs that every Western kosher abattoir incurs — justify inflicting excruciating, yet avoidable, pain on an animal?

The kosher meat industry is a for-profit business. As such, the approach to production is to manufacture an item as cost efficiently as possible. Compared to South America, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Labor and the intermediary meat-sanctioning bodies have much stricter standards for worker and animal welfare and facility sanitation. Additionally, in developed countries employers have the obligation to pay worker accident insurance. The high rate of employee injury in the slaughter business (Human Rights Watch recently reported that meatpacking is the most dangerous factory job in America) makes meat production costly and factors into the decision to produce kosher meat in countries with few to no regulations for worker and animal welfare. Thus, kosher meat authorities exploit and benefit from the lack of worker protection and animal welfare laws in South America.

Judaism is prideful of the fact that Jewish law protects the rights of workers and protects against the unnecessary infliction of pain to an animal. It is for these reasons that the exploitation of worker and animal welfare by current rabbinic leadership is so disappointing, and enraging. The Jewish laity places its trust in rabbinic authority. Not only is a halakhic cut assumed, but a kosher leadership is expected. For its part, the Conservative Movement in America is in the process of creating the Hekhsher Tzedek — a seal of approval of worker rights and animal welfare that will accompany kosher supervision stamps for qualifying kosher meat suppliers. Still, the ability and responsibility to implement caring changes in kosher meat production is in the hands of the Israeli Rabbinate and the OU — the two authorities who support the import of South American kosher meat for sale in their respective countries.

Without question, a diet consisting of minimal animal products reduces the instances of cruelty toward animals. In the case of Israel's kosher meat, the consumer can be certain that refraining from meat consumption sends a message of condemnation to both the governing authorities and businesses that prosper from the industry. This refrain will also ensure the individual's lack of participation in the chain of abuse and the closer fulfillment of mitzvat tsa'ar ba'alei chaim.

As a consumer, will you make your voice heard?

Rabbi Adam Frank is a supporter and a voice of Hakol Chai in the organization's efforts to improve standards of animal welfare in Israel and beyond.
 
Rabbi Frank received rabbinic ordination from the Conservative Movement's Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, where he also earned an MA in Jewish Studies. He is spiritual leader of Congregation Moreshet Yisrael in Jerusalem and teaches at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. He has sponsored halakhic legislation within the Conservative/Masorti Movement to ban animal mistreatment during the kosher slaughter process.