| G-d’s Chosen Diet |
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| Written by Pete Cohon | |||||
| Friday, 17 March 2006 | |||||
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Veggie Jews Promotes a Kashrut Revolution Kashrut laws were initially a great leap in compassion. But times have changed. Veggie Jews, founded in San Francisco in 2003, is an international organization that seeks to provide support for Jewish veggies and vegans, and to project veganism, vegetarianism and animal rights consciousness into the Jewish community. A core belief of the group is that Jewish vegetarianism and veganism can and should replace the traditional dietary laws of kashrut. When the laws of kashrut came into practice, the Mishna and Gemara show, the intent was to be as humane as possible to animals that were to be turned into food. Members of other cultures at the time would cut off a living animal's leg for food one day and another leg the next day, but the Jewish laws of kashrut humanely forced Jews to quickly kill an animal before butchering it. These days, animals killed for food in non-kosher meat processing plants are generally supposed to be stunned before slaughter so that they do not feel pain. Take cows for example. In non-kosher slaughterhouses, a cow is first stunned into unconsciousness, usually with a bolt fired between the eyes, and then hoisted upside down by one leg which causes it to break. Then the cow is cut with a knife from its throat all the way to its belly so that the guts fall out and the animal dies. In some kosher plants, almost the same process is followed, except that the cows are not stunned first and their throats are slit before they are butchered. That means that each animal is fully conscious and in agony as it is hoisted upside down by a leg that breaks and slowly tears away from the animal's heavy body during the two to five minutes before its throat is slit. Even in those slaughterhouses in which hoisting is not utilized, the treatment of animals for kosher use is far from humane by contemporary standards. Undercover video taken by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 2004 shows cows in a kosher-certified Iowa slaughterhouse slamming their heads on the floor, staggering about and even standing shakily minutes after each one had its throat cut and trachea and esophagus ripped out. Contrary to popular belief, the animals do not die instantly. They might take minutes to die during which time they remain alive and conscious. A little-known fact: according to John Robbins’ book, “Diet for a New America,” approximately 50 percent of America’s beef has been killed according to the laws of kashrut. The reasoning? Economic necessity. Kosher beef is almost always cut from just those parts of animals that are the easiest and most economical to take, often the legs, because it's just too time-consuming to remove all of the arteries and veins from a cow. Approximately 50 percent of all cows slaughtered in the U.S. are killed according to kashrut laws, although only five percent of the meat is sold as kosher. Thus, in New Jersey, whose slaughterhouses supply almost all of the beef for New York City, 90 percent of cattle are killed by kosher methods, although most of the meat is not sold as kosher. Even if kosher slaughter were humane, animals raised for food experience agony before ever reaching the slaughterhouses. Intensive, modern factory farming of animals involves such horrors as cutting the beaks off unanesthecized chicks, branding unanesthecized cows with red-hot irons, confining egg laying hens in crates so small that they can't turn around or spread their wings, and castrating bulls without anesthesia. The lives – not to mention the deaths – of these animals are controlled for the economic benefit of those who hope to profit from exploiting them. Though contemporary methods of animal husbandry and slaughter might conform to the letter of kosher laws, they violate the spirit of the law, which enjoins against tsa'ar ba'alei chayim, a mandate not to cause pain to any living being. Many Biblical passages make it clear that a Jew is to treat animals with compassion. It is noteworthy that G-d only allowed the eating of animals after the great flood due to the human demand to do so because all vegetation had been destroyed. But it was G-d's plan from the time of the Garden of Eden that humans eat a vegan vegetarian diet of beans, nuts, grains, fruits and vegetables (see Genesis, 1:29-31). If we really want to be closer to G-d, why not move beyond kosher to G-d's chosen diet, rather than the one G-d reluctantly and temporarily allowed? Judaism has changed enormously over the millennia. We went from animal sacrifice during the days of the Temples in Jerusalem to synagogue prayer after the destruction of the Temple. It was a change so radical that we became a virtually different people, one that was able to survive the centuries and flourish to become a moral light to the world. Now the time has come for the next big leap, one that is not at all radical compared to the changes through which we've already been: the leap to a cruelty-free diet, the leap back to the diet that G-d intended for us. Veggie Jews was created to help us get there.
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