The Conservative synagogue movement is moving ahead with its plans to create a new ethically based certification system for kosher food in response to concerns about working conditions at the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse.
At the annual meeting of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, early this month, the gathering voted to endorse the five-person committee that has for the past year been developing the certification — known as the Heckscher Tzedek, or Justice Certification.
The rabbinical union also voted to provide a budget line — and potentially a staff member — to the push, which, until now, has been a volunteer effort within the Conservative movement. The planned new certification is intended to monitor the working conditions at plants where kosher food is produced.
“If you haven’t been supervising for these issues, it’s not automatically going to happen,” said Rabbi Morris Allen, who has chaired the five-person committee. “Just like if you don’t supervise how a chicken is killed, it won’t necessarily be killed properly. What we are doing now is beginning to provide a means by which we can say, ‘We’re watching; this matters.’”
Allen’s committee is now in the process of planning a pilot program that may be used with select kosher factories. The committee is contracting with a consulting company that specializes in evaluating manager-employee relations. Allen said he hopes that the groundwork for the program will be complete by Rosh Hashanah, which falls in September.
The Heckscher Tzedek initiative has come under sharp criticism from Orthodox rabbis who direct current kosher certification. These rabbis have said that the working conditions at a plant are unrelated to the laws regarding kosher slaughter and should be left to government monitors.
The Conservative committee is developing a curriculum to educate the larger Jewish community about its initiative.
“There shouldn’t be any Jew that isn’t concerned about this,” Allen said. “There has, until now, been a greater stringency in kashruth on the smoothness of a cow’s lung, and people have forgotten that the Torah also speaks about the safety of the worker.”
The committee that developed the Heckscher Tzedek grew out of an investigation of the AgriProcessors slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa (see main article). The Conservative rabbis identified what they described as problems in the working conditions at that plant, and negotiations between the rabbis and the slaughterhouse stumbled. Allen said the committee is now setting its sights more broadly on the entire kosher industry.
“We have turned our focus from trying to fix one piece to trying to fix the entire industry,” Allen said. “We did one preliminary screen in which none of the major players in the kosher meat market did well on [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] reports.”
The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, the Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not. While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason.
To post a comment, click to login:
Copyright © 2012, Forward Association, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Well, the reality is that the mass production of meat for mass consumption is a very grim and unhappy business indeed. Its working conditions are always far from pleasant and improve only marginally at best. I have no objection to curtailing meat consumption, I think it would probably be good for all of us to do that. That will be the result of cleaning these situations up, Because you will have to be prepared to pay alot more for your meat. The central fact of the situation is this: Meat production in America depends largely on illegal aliens who are badly treated in operations much like the author describes in plants all across the country. If you clean up the plants, you drive up the price...big time. I don't have a problem with that. But understand what will happen. And by the way, even if the accusations against Agriprocessors are true, another sad reality is this: The people who put the meat on your table nationwide are most likely far more brutally and inhumanely treated at numerous other plants across the country than they are at Agriprocessors. Don't think you've found a unique situation here, if, indeed, the facts as alleged in the article turn out to be true.
If you have seen the videos of this hideous caricature of righteousness found at http://www.goveg.com/feat/agriprocessors/ I am at a loss that your first concern is for working conditions. For God's sake, this evil perpetrated in the name of kashrut screams for intervention. Where is your soul?
The unbridled cruelty towards the animals at Rubashkins slaughter house makes me ashamed to be a Jew. Become a vegan have compassion!
Would that Jews would realize that Vegetarianism is really the only way to address the mistreatment not only of the workers in these places of hell, but the animals that must endure lives of misery and torture even before they arrive for slaughter.
WHEN KOSHER MEAT IS NOT “KOSHER” I am a mostly vegetarian Conservative Jew. But when I do eat meat, I do not buy Kosher meat. I feel that the slaughter of animals in non-Kosher meat facilities in the U.S. is a more humane treatment of animals, since they are rendered immediately unconscious by electrical stunning. Although Shechita also can be performed humanely, there is no guarantee that this occurs in U.S. Kosher slaughterhouses. In fact, “Kosher” actually means “fit” or “proper.” Thus, I believe that if the meat we consume is truly fit or Kosher, we must ensure that the animals that supplied that meat live and die humanely. In 2004, a videotape by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) documented egregious inhumane animal abuse at AgriProcessors in Postville, IA, the largest glatt kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in the world. Violation of animal cruelty laws at AgriProcessors subsequently was confimed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fully conscious cattle had their tracheas and esophagi ripped from their throats, animals languished on the floor for several minutes after their throats were slit, and electric prods were used on cows’ faces to force the terrified animals to enter the slaughter room. Inversion pens (where the animal is confined and turned upside down for Shechita) continue to be used in this facility. Clearly these atrocities violate tza’ar ba’alei hayyim, the mandate within the Torah against causing pain to animals. Now, worker mistreatment and unsafe working conditions at this same AgriProcessors plant has prompted a rabbinic commission of the Conservative movement to create a Heckscher Tzedek, or “justice certification,” to ensure humane labor standards at Kosher food plants. I call upon this rabbinic commission to include guidelines for humane Kosher Shechita as part of this new Tsedek Heksher certification. These guidelines should include: 1) waiting until lack of movement before moving or removing organs from animals; 2) banning the use of electric prods; 3) providing a calm atmosphere for the animals; 4) using captive bolting (fatal electrical shock) in a timely fashion when Shechita fails to produce rapid unconsciousness (making meat from these animals un-Kosher); 5) requiring the use of an upright pen for animal restraint (such as the Grandin pen); 6) prohibiting the practice of shackling and hoisting and the use of inversion pens (currently stated to be a violation of Jewish law in the Conservative Teshuvah authored by Elliot Dorff and Joel Roth, "Shackling and Hoisting" YD 6.2000); 7) re-considering the use of pre- Shechita stunning (halakhically reasonable grounds for pre- Shechita stunning are presented in the Conservative Teshuvah authored by Mayer E. Rabinowitz, "A Stunning Matter: Stunning and Bolting After Shehitah." YD 27:1.2001a). When the spirit of the law becomes as important as the letter of the law with regards to Shechita, I will once again consider purchasing Kosher meat.
As a Jewish woman I was appalled by the inhumane treatment at the Rubashkins slaughter house. When do ritual and observance replace an ethical life. Rabbis, Men of G-d? Where is the outrage from the Orthodox community.