Fun With PETA
I wanted to post again today, but I remain surprisingly busy. Hence, instead of my own hilarious and brilliant observations, here is the full text on an email I received about two hours ago from one John Machuzak of PETA. I don’t know why it was sent to me, but I do know that its unquestionable hilarity is tempered only its implication that Foer, whose novels I love, is some sort of psycho. Anyway:
For Immediate Release:
April 5, 2006
Contact:
Ben Goldsmith 757-622-7382, ext. 8270; BenG@peta.org
AUTHOR JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER HOSTS VIDEO EXPOSÉ OF THE KOSHER-MEAT INDUSTRY
Author Slams World’s Largest Glatt Kosher Slaughterhouse, Orthodox Union Following Atrocities Exposed by PETA
New York — Jonathan Safran Foer’s new project isn’t a book, it’s a mission. The acclaimed author of the Holocaust-inspired novel, Everything Is Illuminated—which was translated into 26 languages, named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times, won the National Jewish Book Award for fiction, and was recently made into a motion picture starring Elijah Wood—has created a shocking new video that contains graphic undercover footage taken inside kosher slaughterhouses. In the video, titled “If This Is Kosher …,” Foer walks viewers through the investigation at AgriProcessors—the world’s largest glatt kosher slaughterhouse—and makes the case that modern animal farms violate Jewish law (halacha), which requires humane treatment of animals. His conclusion? Jews should reject violence to animals and adopt a vegetarian diet.
Foer’s video shows completely conscious cows who are writhing in agony in pools of their own blood. Workers jab cows in the face with electric prods, rip their tracheas out of their throats while the animals are still conscious, and dump them onto a concrete floor, where they stumble and try to get up as blood pours from their throats. Many can be seen standing and walking around as their tracheas dangle from their necks.
“Not at all surprisingly, veterinary and animal welfare experts unanimously condemned AgriProcessors. Very surprisingly, though, both the plant and kosher certification agencies actually defended these cruel practices,” explains Foer. Referring to plant owner Sholom Rubashkin’s claim that PETA’s video represents kosher slaughter “in its full glory,” Foer asks, “Do you agree? Are these the highest standards of Jewish law and tradition? Or is this activity a perversion of our tradition, on the part of a massive corporation, whose interest in profits is all-consuming enough to allow such blatant cruelty to happen?”
Well-known rabbis Irving “Yitz” Greenberg (Orthodox), president of the Jewish Life Network, and David Wolpe (Conservative) of the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles also appear in the video in support of Foer and PETA’s suggestion that the best way for Jews to take a stand against cruelty is to adopt a vegetarian diet.
A copy of “If This Is Kosher …” is available upon request. For more information, please visit HumaneKosher.com
April 6, 2006 at 9:43 pm
This seems like relatively uncharted terrain as far as animal rights watches go, and as the sort-of face of a young liberal Judiasm that maintains a deep respect for tradition, I think Foer is a fitting spokesperson for the cause. I was always told that the butchering laws of Kashrut were a more substantive form of religious obsessive-compulsion because they were based on respect and empathy for the animal life that is lost to sustain human life. I saw this as further evidence of what I know to be Judaism’s high standards of morality and compassion- a way of reconciling what seemed like biologically appropriate meat-eating with sympathy for other creatures.
The actions that are described in the slaughterhouse are a clear disrespect of what I understood to be the spirit of the law. While obviously “spirit” is difficult to quantify and written law is open to interpretation, what really irks me is blatant cruelty that is enacted with religious justification. This should always be a red flag.
I don’t think it’s just because I am living in San Francisco now that the news presented in this post made me sad. Go Jonathan!