In 2005, Israel’s Knesset (Parliament) forbade the
forced stuffing of geese before their slaughter. This barbaric and cruel
practice causes to goose’s liver to swell up to ten times its normal size. A
funnel is forcibly inserted into the poor animal’s throat as huge amounts of
food are forced down into its body. Curiously, it was
A large goose liver brings
increased profits for this “delicacy.” Although
Traditionally, animals raised for kosher consumption
have been treated with much greater levels of humane treatment than those
raised for consumption by Gentiles. Regretfully, in modern times, it makes
little difference whether the animal is raised for kosher consumption, or for
non-kosher consumption.
A hundred years ago, there was the expression:
“Every day of a chicken’s life is happy – except for the last day.” This
is perhaps dark humor. However, it was true, as one could watch the chickens
happily wandering around the chicken yards, pecking at various morsels of food.
My in-laws in
Today, however, chickens in most countries
are not generally raised with any freedom. They are raised in factory-farms,
often in Battery Cages about 18 inches by 20 inches, in which 5 to 11 hens are
kept for up to two years at a time. Their diet is manipulated to produce a
constant egg- laying cycle. This is highly profitable for the factory farm, but
is also extremely cruel to these poor birds. In such horribly crowded
conditions, the chickens can’t even move. Such conditions also produce hostility,
in which chickens peck at other chickens. To prevent such pecking, the points
of their beaks are sawn off (without anesthetics, of course). They die
constantly from illness, filth, and other afflictions from such crowded conditions.
The Battery Cages are stacked one on top of the other. Excrement from the upper
Battery Cages drops onto the chickens in the lower cages. The stench and filth
are incredible. These chickens are also fed with a steady diet of antibiotics.
Otherwise, disease in such crowded, unsanitary conditions could easily spread
to all other chickens, destroying an entire factory farm. When the meat or eggs
from these birds is consumed, we humans are also taking in such antibiotics
second-hand. We are at risk of creating diseases that are resistant to
antibiotics, perhaps even developing some of the plagues described in the Book
of Revelation, killing hundreds of millions of people.
I am not a vegetarian, and I am not advising
our readers to become vegetarians. However, I am strongly against factory
farms. I would expect that meat, milk, and eggs from animals imprisoned in
factory farms would not be considered kosher. Unfortunately, I would be wrong.
Modern rabbis are supposedly concerned about humane slaughter, but have no
concerns about the miserable lives of these animals before slaughter.
In addition, these factory farms for chickens,
pigs, cattle, etc., are environmental nightmares. The refuse from these virtual
concentration camps for animals pollutes our air, water, and soil. The meat,
eggs, and milk of such animals is also not healthy for human consumption.
Growth hormones are also given to the animals to encourage faster growth to
maturation and earlier slaughter, thereby producing more dollars for the
factory farms. I suspect that this has the side effect of being consumed
second-hand by humans, perhaps leading to earlier sexual maturity for our children,
who don’t have the emotional maturity to handle the changes taking place in their
bodies.
I am not that concerned about “greenhouse gases” warming the planet. I live in
Most of our cattle spend the remaining
months of their short lives in crowded feedlots. They consume more
energy-intensive feed than other livestock. Rain forests are being cut down to
produce farmland to produce the grain that goes to feed the cattle in these feedlots.
A few decades ago, most cattle