I hadn't noticed that America's largest kosher meat processor has been recently plagued by scandal, though an Orthodox friend tells me that this is huge news in the kosher community. Apparently, it's created quite a shortage of kosher meat. A big part of the controversy is the slaughter practices, which, at least according to PETA activists, violate the spirit if not the letter of kashrut.
I wonder if this doesn't have some connection to the weekend's discussion of rules-vs-principles based regulation. Kosher law is incredibly detailed, in part because rabbis were trying to do what my religious studies professor called "building a wall around the torah"--setting up one's life so that it is almost impossible to accidentally violate a commandment. So the original prohibition against boiling a kid in the milk of its mother becomes a set of very elaborate rules designed to make sure that no specks of milk and meat ever come into contact in one's digestive system.
For the unscrupulous, this opens up an area of opportunity. The original kosher slaughter laws were designed to, among other things, minimize the suffering of the animals. But they predated the assembly line, when speed became profit. So now a slaughterhouse can hoist an animal up by ropes and hang it upside down to make it bleed out faster, while still arguing that it has not violated kosher law. In letter, yes. In spirit, this seems to obviously violate the principle that one should minimize animal suffering.
Of course, various Jewish communities constantly debate and update laws for just this reason. But just as with government regulation, the rules will always be a little behind the clever bastards looking for loopholes. Whereas if the slaughterhouses were required to stick to the objective of making the animals suffer as little as possible, it would be pretty clear that a lot of these practices flunked the test.
It's not just the slaughtering issue that has caused controversy; it's also the treatement of the workers that violate Halakha (Jewish law). Anyone that actively seeks out illegals because they are willing to do the work for less money and not make a fuss - that is also a major no-no.
I think the slaughterhouse just made news for having 400 of its workers detained for lack of documents. That is certain to cause a shortage! But when this happens, I always wonder why the employer that is supposed to be checking for documents is never detained.
I'm not convinced about your point in the last paragraph. While I'm not at all in favor of the rabbinic approach of exhaustively cataloging every permissible situation (being borderline libertarian that I am), I certainly understand why some take that approach.
The Rule of Law is supposed to let you determine, in advance, if your actions are legal or not. Having an "aspirational" law, as you seem to be advocating, just gives every PETAoid in the country leeway to second-guess you if they claim to have found some way that causes less suffering.
This reminds me of this Dani Rodrik post, although I suppose he's really just examining a particular mechanism by which to enforce a standards-based, rather than rules-based, regime. The basic idea is, do what you want, I'll pay you extra, just don't do anything that, in retrospect, will displease me. As with all standards-based systems, this depends on an honest regulator, but it has the advantage that the regulated entity should seek to maximize transparency and generally please the consuming public.
Anyone that actively seeks out illegals because they are willing to do the work for less money and not make a fuss - that is also a major no-no.
I don't remember reading "Thou shalt not hire thy neighbor because he'll do the work for less pay" in the Bible.
I'm not at all sure that PETA activists are a trustworthy source on Talmud anyway.
In fact, reading their babbling, it sure seems that this "minimal cruelty" ideal is one that comes from PETA as a stealth "don't eat meat because it's always cruel", not from the "spirit of kashrut".
When rabbis and PETA activists disagree about kashrut, I'm not taking the side of PETA activists.
(Not that it matters to me personally, since I'm not Jewish, and happily eat my cruelly-produced bacon.)
Nelson,
Not the Torah/Bible, but the Talmud.
Here is a link:
http://www.israelforum.com/blog_article.php?aid=1507600
"However, I don’t think whether the meat produced by Agriprocessors is kosher to eat or not is really our concern. We don’t want to know if it is kosher to eat. We want to know if it is kosher to buy.
Why would meat from Agriprocessors not be kosher to buy? A legal discussion in the Talmud (Shabbat 3a) provides a reason:
On the Sabbath it is forbidden to pick up an object in the public domain and put it down in a private domain. If someone picks something up in a public domain and puts it into the hands of a second person standing in a private domain, the first person has violated the Sabbath and the second person has not.
The Tosfot commentary on the Talmud questions whether it is really possible for this second person to be completely in the clear. After all, he is a party to violating the Sabbath.
So Tosfot explains that while this person has not violated the law of carrying on the Sabbath, he has violated a different prohibition: the prohibition of being part of an activity that involves wrongdoing.
This is the way many of us may come to feel with regard to Agriprocessors if the allegations turn out to be true. When we buy the meat, even though as consumers our role in perpetrating the alleged violations is passive, we nevertheless associate ourselves with doing something wrong."
Hiring illegal immigrants is a violation of the law. Illegal business practices would therefore, according to the Tosfot commentary, make the Rubashkin's meat "illegal" (i.e., against Halakha) to buy. (But not illegal to eat.) In any case, not good for the kosher meat supply.
Doesn't this fit well with the MDF's comment on your "law of rules" post? MDF argues that it's a mistake to focus on principles vs. rules in regulation: the important choice variable is the regulator's enforcement. In this case, the "regulator" of kosher law is one's own conscience, so one doesn't have to worry so much about constraining the authority's discretion with very specific rules. On the other hand, if you think the religious authority is ultimately toothless and one's own conscience more so, maybe a principle-based approach is better, so that it's not always obvious that the rules are being broken.
sigivald,
I agree with you re PETA. They showed their disdain for Judaism in their ad comparing farm animals to Shoah victims. (It wasn't the anti-meat message that was offensive, but the equating of an animal life with a human life, which goes against everything Jewish.) I think they worsened the issue by claiming that they had their staff Jews write the ad.
That said, it's not just PETA, but The Forward and the Conservative movement that have taken leads in the investigation. PETA may have started things, but they did bring a camera, and that was enough to get members of the Jewish community interested.
So, forget PETA and read The Forward and listen to Conservative rabbis on the issue, if you are so inclined. Or just eat your bacon and enjoy.
Hiring illegal immigrants is a violation of the law.
The law or the Law? Some arbitrary man-made prohibition or a violation of the will of God? If the later, please cite your source as the article quote didn't address the issue.
That is certain to cause a shortage! But when this happens, I always wonder why the employer that is supposed to be checking for documents is never detained.
I presume this is a rhetorical question.
I believe its the original "Faces of Death" that contains the Kosher killing of a cow. Compared to modern slaugherhouse techniques, the sight of the cow gurgling through its own blood as the Rabbi slices its throat by hand looks downright sadistic and hardly humane.
A lot of people have an assumption that because a Rabbi is involved it must be more humane than what the large corporations do, but that is not necessarily the case.
As for illegals, is there a meetpacking plant in the US that doesn't employ illegals? Its a way of life, and corporation friendly lawmakers won't crack down on the employers. It helps keep profits up and prices at the grocery store down.
As for the illegals, crack down on them, and wages go up for the legals that replace them. The meatpackers usually past these higher costs on as higher prices to consumers. If this were happen on a grand scale, my guess is you'd consumers screaming left and right for something to be done about yet another factor causing the price of meat to skyrocket. The entire industry relies on the cheap endless supply of workers willing to do very dangerous jobs for little money. To do things legitimately and safely, all of us would have to start paying a lot more at the store, and if there is one thing that can be said about Americans, we're willing to turn a blind eye to many terrible things if it'll save people a buck or two.
"So now a slaughterhouse can hoist an animal up by ropes and hang it upside down to make it bleed out faster, while still arguing that it has not violated kosher law. In letter, yes. In spirit, this seems to obviously violate the principle that one should minimize animal suffering."
I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that hoisting an animal - typically by its hind legs - is causing suffering. Annoyance? Yes. Discomfort? Some. Suffering? Not even close.
In fact, the hoisting would actually cause less "suffering" since the death of the animal is caused by exsanguination the faster you can bleed out the animal the quicker the death.
Anyone that actively seeks out illegals because they are willing to do the work for less money and not make a fuss - that is also a major no-no.
Thou shalt slam the door in the starving faces of foreigners?
I am an Orthodox Jewish rabbinical student, and I would just like to clarify a few things. First, Jewish law (Halacha) says nothing about hiring illegal immigrants, or paying low wages as long as the worker accepts those wages. There is a law that a business must pay their workers on time, which is irrelevant here. However, there is a separate law which states that the laws of the country you are living must be followed as long as it does not conflict with Halacha. However, this is not relevant to those buying the goods from the company violating that particular law, as the issue from the Talmud Shabbos 3a is specifically refering to where you actively help the other person sin even though the action you did is not itself a sin. Buying goods from someone who did a sin in the process of making those goods is considered to be too far emoved from the original sin for the buyer to have violated what Tosafot mentions regarding the case in Shabbos 3a.
As to the issues regarding slaughter, there are two different laws that are relevant. First there is a law that the slaughter must be performed in a specific way. Some have argued that this is because that method of slaughter is more humane, but whether this is actually the reaason is highly questionable from the standpoint of Halacha for reasons that would take too long to explain and require extensive knowledge of Halacha. There is asecond separate law stating that you can not torture animals or cause them excessive pain. This law would be relevant here, but whether the animals were caused pain or not, it does not have any effect on whether that animal is kosher or not which only relates to the first law. And again, the case from the Talmud Shabbos3a is not relevant here for the exact same reason as above.
What a sad post. It takes a very special "voice" to not have noticed that the company in question was in the news back in May.
Let me suggest this helpful site:
google.com
http://www.amazon.com/Postville-Clash-Cultures-Heartland-America/dp/0156013363
I believe this provides some insight into problems the problems in Postville.
"I'm not at all sure that PETA activists are a trustworthy source on Talmud anyway."
This reminds me of the debate in Tibet and China over the Panchen Lama. The Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhists claimed that one child was the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chose someone else and kidnapped the original Panchen Lama and his family when the boy was only 6 years old. The boy (now about 19) hasn't been heard from since, except that CCP members say that he's happy and is being held for his own good.
Ever since then, the CCP has had a campaign to explain to Tibetans that the poor, confused Dalai Lama just doesn't understand Tibetan Buddhism as well as atheist Party members, and thus that their choice (the son of a Communist Party member, raised in Beijing) is the true 11th reincarnation. The CCP also chooses bishops for the Catholic Church in China, since the Pope apparently doesn't have a sufficient understanding of Catholicism. Maybe the CCP could explain the Talmud for us, as well.
I think one big issue is that many meat processing companies separate the slaughter and the processing. I believe that they can be often separate to the point where the rabbi OK's the slaughter, but doesn't know much about the processing. They have some involvement for salting the meat, but I don't think they manage the processing.
I always been taught that Kosher rules were in place primarily for the health and safety of humans, sort of like ancient versions of FDA and USDA regulations.
What a fascinating line of comments!!
About the illegal-worker-issue line of thought--I couldn't help but feel the huge contrast between the Jewish idea that moral behavior has to be considered as each act spreads its effects thru society like a ripple, versus the conservative/fundamental protestantism of my youth in which morality was deeply individual and personal. Huh!! That will be food for thought sometime soon.
About the 'cruelty to animals' side of things, I think I know a good deal more. Altho my family never raised animals let alone slaughtered them I nonetheless saw the process of killing and butchering several times growing up. It's done in the fall when nights turn cold. A huge bonfire is involved. The senior member of the family doing the butchering loads up his biggest handgun (which of course sends spasms of anticipatory excitement thru all little boys within 100 miles, to see grandpa loading up his .44). The critter (usually a hog, once in my memory an old and bad tempered bull) is made to stretch his neck out by the offer of food and then he's shot in the head. Afterward his throat is cut and he's hoisted up by the feet. If no barn is available, a tripod of strong pipes seems always nearby; they're handy for lifting the motors out of pickuptrucks. I assure you, none of those animals were the least bit inconvienenced by being hung upside down.
Folks, does this look kosher to you?
Does this?
Megan arguments apply not only to the Jewish community but also to Islam. Harâm anybody? Pathetic!
They're animals. It's irrelevant. Plus the sweet taste of cruelty and anger of PETAites and Megan make every bite of conventionally raised and slaughtered beef and pork all that more satisfying.
In the immortal words of Homer J. Simpson "You don't make friends with salad! You don't make friends with salad!"
PS: Do the country a favor, run over a bicyclist!
ZH,
Thank you for your thoughtful post. In fact, the link describes another example where a wedding party eats food that the host decides not to pay for. Because the party did not know the host would dishonor his agreements, the food was never traife.
So, I think you're right in that case to say "Buying goods from someone who did a sin in the process of making those goods is considered to be too far removed from the original sin for the buyer to have violated what Tosafot mentions regarding the case in Shabbos 3a."
But, how about when we know what's going on, and we understand our place in the food chain? Are we still too far removed for this to be a sin? BTW I understand that there is nothing wrong with paying someone a wage that they accept, but there is something wrong with breaking the laws of your land, a law which I and many others consider moral.
Also, I am not an Orthodox rabbinical student, so I consider your responses as learning on my part, not fodder for clashes. But I do think, as a consumer of kashrut meat, I deserve some answers.
a law which I and many others consider moral.
What's moral about it? Where in the Bible or Jewish teachings does it say it's good and right to deny someone a job based on their birth status?
Jewish practice seems to encourage aborting babies but avoiding cheeseburgers. This keeps Kosher kind of Oriental for me.
About Michael's post: I didn't know Extremely-Reform Jews avoided cheeseburgers.
Nelson,
I, myself, consider it moral - no, of course it's not in the Bible. Read more carefully before posting, please. And I am not going to start posting about immigration law in this thread, sorry.
Michael,
"Jewish practice seems to encourage aborting babies..."
Do you have any f-ing idea of what you are writing?
Observed and written