 |
|
Sept. 3, 2010
Ground Zero Mosque Investor Was Terror Contributor (INVESTIGATIVE VIDEO)
Sept. 2, 2010
John Rosemond: What do today's children seriously lack that children in the 1950s and before enjoyed in abundance?
Sept. 1, 2010
August 31, 2010
Mark Johnson: Scientists unveil new step in less-controversial stem-cell efforts
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Not a Muslim, but there's certainly legitimate room for concern over Obama's recent repeated actions
August 30, 2010
August 27, 2010
August 26, 2010
August 25, 2010
Nat Hentoff: Am I also a bigot? Pols clueless on Ground Zero mosque
Sarah Tully: Muslim employee is taken off Disney's schedule after deciding she no longer wants to wear uniform
August 24, 2010
August 23, 2010
August 20, 2010
August 19, 2010
Jeff Jacoby: The 'disengagement' disaster, five years on
George Will: Skip the lectures on Israel's 'risks for peace'
August 18, 2010
Lee Margulies: Dr. Laura to leave radio show amid controversy (INCLUDES VIDEO)
August 17, 2010
Dennis Prager: Same-Sex Marriage and the Insignificance of Men and Women
August 16, 2010
August 13, 2010
August 12, 2010
Larry Elder: Is Obama Winning the Hearts and Minds of the Arab and Muslim World?
August 11, 2010
Rene Stutzman: Muslim-turned-'infidel', now 18, is ready to begin life anew
August 10, 2010
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Nov. 29, 2004
/ 16 Kislev, 5765
Radical vegetarian group seeking to slaughter one of the world's largest kosher meat processors
By
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky
PETA's latest ploy The NYTimes gets scooped of its own story!
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the radical vegetarian group that in an advertising campaign once compared the slaughtering of chickens to the murder of Holocaust victims, is taking aim at one of the world's largest kosher meat processors.
AgriProcessors Inc., the Postville, Iowa-based firm that markets meat under the Rubashkin and Aaron's Best label and is found in America's biggest supermarket chains, is being accused by the group of violating humane slaughter laws and Halacha, or Jewish ritual procedure.
Complaints against the company began a year and a half ago, when PETA wrote the meat producer and in unspecific terms expressed its dissatisfaction with the company's operating procedures. The company's lawyer, Nathan Lewin, responded by offering to discuss and, if necessary, fix any problem the group had. But he said he never heard back from them.
Last week, Mr. Lewin, regarded as one of the country's leading authority on church-state issues, was contacted by the New York Times seeking comment on an undercover videotape the paper received from PETA, in which it claimed to document abuses by the meat manufacturer. On Friday, Mr. Lewin traveled from his home in Washington, D.C., to The New York Times' Manhattan offices to watch the video with Rabbi Chaim Kohn, Chief Dayan of Khal Adath Yeshurun, AgriProcessors' New York City-based kosher certifying agency.
The film, which Mr. Lewin describes as having no audio track but uses titles with dates of supposed abuses — from August and September of this year — depicts the slaughtering process in gory detail. Viewers see the shochet, or ritual slaughterer, cutting in one uninterrupted incision the esophagus and trachea. Then, another person facilitates bleeding in order to render the cow unconscious.
While there is much blood, explains Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, one of the nation's leading authorities on the kosher slaughtering process, and a head of the kosher division of the Orthodox Union, it is precisely the bleeding that renders the slaughter the most humane because it makes sure the animal feels absolutely no pain because it is totally unconscious.
Mr. Lewin charges that "all PETA wants to do is inflame the public against kosher slaughter." The group, he added, "just doesn't understand shechita — what's permitted under Jewish, and consequently, American Law."
The video also shows cows appearing to still be alive after the slaughtering process. But, "reflexive movement", wherein dead creatures appear to be alive is quite common, Rabbi Belsky said. "Think of chickens running without heads," he said.
News of PETA's attack against a prominent kosher meat manufacturer forced a historic vote at the Agudath Israel of America's annual convention in Stamford, Connecticut. Moments before the end of the powerful Orthodox umbrella group's four-day strategizing session yesterday, David Zwiebel, its executive vice president of government and public affairs, took to the microphone urging all in the room to remain seated. By unanimous vote, the group condemned what it termed a "vicious and unethical attack on Jewish religious practice."
Though PETA had previously compared the slaughtering of chickens to the murder of Holocaust victims, the Agudath resolution noted that among the first organized efforts the Nazis did against Jews was "peddling photographs of allegedly 'cruel' kosher slaughter." PETA, the resolution added "now follows in that vile course." Jewish tradition, the proclamation said, "introduced human society to the concept of humane treatment of animals and that, even today, is well ahead of organizations such as PETA in its concern for welfare of all living creatures."
Agreeing with PETA, however, are two rabbis: Shear Yashuv Cohen, Chief Rabbi of Haifa and President of the Haifa District Rabbinical Courts, and Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee's director of Interreligious Affairs, according to Mr. Lewin. However, PETA did not point out in its material that both rabbis identify themselves as vegetarians.
PETA officials could not be reached yesterday for comment.
Rabbi Cohen was unaware that he was being used by PETA in any way, according to Mr. Lewin. He told the lawyer that he was approached by an Israeli animal rights activist, Tal Ronen, who told him he was a baal teshuva, or recently-turned Orthodox Jew, who was interested in the proper treatment of animals.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky is editor in chief of JewishWorldReview.com. This column appears in today's issue of the New York Sun. Comment by clicking here.
© 2004, JWR
|
