It is a perennial problem of human nature: Groups of people — whether countries or clubs, races or religions — don’t like outsiders criticizing their members or practices, even when the criticisms may have at least some validity or may be offered in a supposed good faith and constructive spirit.
And that is especially the case when the group in question has a history of enduring persecution or discrimination.
This seems to be one of the issues in the background of the recent controversy over the shechitah (kosher slaughtering) practices at the Iowa-based Agriprocessors plant.
The group in question, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), has clashed with the Jewish community before.
Last year, PETA toured an exhibit called “Holocaust on Your Plate” (see Chronicle, Aug. 1, 2003), which compared the U.S. meat industry to the German Nazi genocide of the European Jews — an exhibit that Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs of Agudath Israel of America, called “incredibly offensive” in an e-mail to The Chronicle.
In fact, Agudath Israel at its most recent national convention, this past Thanksgiving weekend, passed a resolution alleging that PETA “is pursuing its anti-religious agenda” through its criticism of Agriprocessors.
According to news reports from the Jerusalem Post and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, PETA has denied that it is attacking kosher slaughter in general.
Nevertheless, there has been a history of people attacking shechitah who have been motivated by anti-Semitism; and PETA, by the way it proceeded here, may give such people ammunition, say some in the Jewish community.
“I don’t think anybody at Agudath Israel believes PETA is motivated by anti-Semitism,” said Rabbi Avner Zarmi, vice president of Agudath Israel’s Wisconsin chapter. “But this sort of irresponsible, over-the-top criticism, it sounded almost like a tantrum.”
Moreover, “when they couldn’t get their way, [PETA officials] decided to do this devious, underhanded thing [sneak a hidden video camera into the Agriprocessors plant] to try to make their point in some other fashion,” Zarmi continued. “This tactic gives credence to people who do have unsavory agendas. That’s the fear.”
Effects on Europe?
There has been no serious history of attempts to outlaw shechitah in the United States. But there have been and still are such efforts in Europe.
The alleged reason has to do with whether the technique of slaughter is humane.
Shechitah requires one clean cut through the animal’s throat, instantly severing the windpipe and the arteries and veins supplying blood to the brain. If done right, this renders the animal unconscious almost immediately.
Modern shechitah opponents allege that the animal feels pain during this process, and they demand that the animal be stunned or anesthetized first. This, however, would render the slaughter not kosher because, according to Shafran, the stunning itself could kill or injure the animal or prevent it from bleeding fully. (Kashrut prohibits consumption of blood; therefore animals have to be drained of blood before consumption.)
Switzerland (since the 1890s), Sweden, Norway and Iceland have prohibited shechitah either directly or indirectly by requiring that all animals be stunned prior to slaughter with no exceptions.
According to a researcher quoted in a Moment magazine article about kosher slaughter in February 1991, “There is no doubt that anti-Semitism was involved in these instances.”
One of the first anti-Jewish decrees issued by the German Nazis after they took power in 1933 was to ban shechitah. Moreover, Nazi propaganda made use of distorted portrayals of kosher slaughter to dehumanize Jews.
Last year in Great Britain, the Farm Animal Welfare Council recommended that the government outlaw all slaughtering of animals without stunning them first, which would prohibit both shechitah and slaughter under hallal, the Muslim dietary code.
The World Jewish Congress, in its August 2003 report on this effort, said that “the viciousness of the campaign” against shechitah “raises considerable questions about what really motivates it.”
Apparently, the British government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs this past April assured the Jewish and Muslim communities that it would not completely ban kosher and hallal slaughter, according to BBC News.
However, this issue “is still going on” and has “not been fully resolved” there, according to Joe M. Regenstein, visiting professor of food science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and professor of food science at Cornell University.
Regenstein (see sidebar) told The Chronicle that he is “worried about the effect on Europe” of the Agriprocessors controversy. In Britain especially, the negotiations are at “a sensitive stage” and “one didn’t need this kind of incident in terms of those negotiations.”
Therefore, to suspect anti-Semitism behind attacks on shechitah “is the natural reaction of those Jewish groups who think in European terms,” said Regenstein.
Yet even apart from anti-Semitism stands what Regenstein called a “philosophical issue of having anybody [outside the Jewish community] say anything” about kashrut.
And Zarmi seemed to acknowledge this when he pointed out that “PETA has an agenda; they wish to set themselves up as the arbiters of what is and isn’t humane” in the treatment of animals.
“We object strenuously to that,” Zarmi continued. “We don’t believe that [PETA officials and activists] know [about kosher slaughter] to the extent that our rabbis and poskim [halachic decisors] know.”
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