Ethical Standards and the Kosher Meat Industry

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

Animal slaughtering came under American governmental scrutiny in the late 19th century because of concern for human health and safety, the humane treatment of animals, and financial matters. The particular Jewish religious method of slaughter, SHECHITA, differs from the method preferred by animal welfare advocates, and this resulted in the need for Jews to defend SHECHITA and to adjust it to the requirements of U.S. law. These three papers address the question of why it has been so difficult to incorporate ethical practices into the American kosher meat businesses, focusing on the era following World War II until the present. Roger Horowitz describes how kosher beef has become a marginal product in the American economy, and often produced in small slaughterhouses with backward technology that are sometimes not in compliance with humane slaughter standards. His paper will argue that these developments are intimately related: the marginalization of kosher meat production has made it difficult to follow humane slaughter standards. Jody Myers, examining the discourse of American Orthodox rabbis around SHECHITA, finds conflicting ways of discussing ethics, depending on whether rabbis are presenting to "outsiders" such as governmental committees or to "insiders" such as other committed Orthodox Jews. She shows that the ambivalence toward ethical reasoning, distrust of non-Jews and "their" science, and internal communal needs hamper the rabbis' ability to deal with the unprecedented aspects of industrialized meat slaughter. Moses Pava's paper examines the rise and fall of Agriprocessors, once the largest producer of kosher beef in the U.S. Applying a constructive reading and interpretation of the biblical commandment of loving the stranger, Pava argues that Jewish ethics calls for a balance between “loving your neighbor” and “loving the stranger.” The absence of this balance, illustrated in the financial and labor practices of the Agriprocessors owners, led to a large-scale ethical as well as business failure. The chair and respondent for this session will be Aaron Gross, a scholar who has written on the ethics of factory farming and slaughter. The session as a whole illumines the role of Jews as business owners, consumers, and religious leaders in modern America.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish History in the Americas

Chair

• Jennifer Thompson, California State University at Northridge

Individual Presentations

• Humane Slaughter and the Enduring Crisis of Kosher Beef since the 1970s - Roger Horowitz, Hagley Museum and Library

• Orthodox Rabbinic Discourse on Kosher Meat Slaughtering - Jody Myers, California State University at Northridge

• Agriprocessors and the Implications of Moral Myopia - Moses Pava, Yeshiva University

Respondent

• Aaron Saul Gross, University of San Diego