Question:
Maybe you have the answer to this... I've kept kosher my whole life, and was always told that the slaughter/care process of animals for kosher meat was a lot more humane. There was one case a few years ago that a meat producer that was kosher lost their kosher license because of unfair labor practices. Anyways, do you know if the animals they slaughter are kept more humanely - I know they're not being slaughtered/packed by the major manufacturers (because of the extra expense of making things kosher) but don't know if its really as humane as people like to think.
Answer:
I’m finding some vegan websites that say that kosher meat comes from the same slaughterhouses with the same abuses as non-kosher. Others say that of course slaughterhouses are nasty brutish places, but that schechita (kosher slaughter) is one of the most painless killing methods, as it uses a very sharp knife to sever the trachea and esophagus, which almost always results in an animal losing consciousness in about five seconds. By contrast, the captive bolt method in most non-kosher killings sometimes has to be repeated up to five times.
Unfortunately it appears that most of the sources are in agreement that no matter how the animals are killed, their lives are played out in much the same way: crowded, unsanitary and fed the same crap. This is not true at smaller farms that supply specialized markets, which would probably mean pretty high prices.
As I’m coming to expect, our government fails us over and over again. The USDA is supposed to act under a Humane Slaughter Act, but doesn’t enforce it.
To wrap it up, it appears that the answer is SOMETIMES YES SOMETIMES NO.
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2 comments:
That's really sad. After slaughter, Kosher cows are supposed to be inspected for any signs of disease (like a lesion on their lung) to get full certification. So you'd think that they would be raising the cows more humanely to avoid having any lesioned animals. But since the slaughterhouses can always just send the meat to McDonalds, I guess the incentive isn't there for the businessmen.
As usual, our health and the health of the entire planet is a money game, so I guess we have to keep being careful where we spend it.
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