> Those who insisted on entering the shops were heckled and, on their departure, assaulted. Their parcels of meat were confiscated, hurled into the gutters and sometimes doused with kerosene. Butchers were goaded into closing, and those who refused were attacked. Their inventory was destroyed and in many cases their windows and fixtures were smashed.
It's not really a boycott if it's by force
It's also not clear if they really had an real impact given
> The Justice Department of “trust-buster” President Theodore Roosevelt had taken note, and on May 10, the very day the kosher butchers had first shut down, took the packers to court to force them to cease their illegal practices.
In other words the government had independently started suing before the influence of this group.
Fun fact, Muslim can eat kosher meats but generally Jews cannot eat halal meats.
The main reason is that they are both descendent of Abrahamic based religion that always slaughter their herd animals to eat by the name of one God. Muhammad is a descendent of Ismail while Moses is the descendent of Isaac, both are siblings from the same father Abraham but different mother. Even the original languages for their holy scriptures namely Arabic and Hebrew are very similar by being rooted from the same original Semitic based language.
Your second paragraph begins with "The main reason is that" by what follows is not really a reason, though it's an interesting tidbit. When kosher and/or halal adherents accept the others' standards, it's because they believe it is at least a strict as their own. Kind of like how a vegetarian will eat food labeled as vegan.
But like another commenter pointed out, interpretations of these rules vary widely among practitioners so making blanket statements about who might eat what is difficult.
Please note that I'm not a scholar of Islamic or Jewish study and don't take my comments seriously.
OK I will re-phrase that to "one of the main reasons" since for the meat to be considered halal it needs to fulfill two main requirements. Firstly it must be slaughtered by the name of one God and secondly it must be slaughtered with proper procedures. For most religions, the practices are always come down to spiritual and physical aspects, and as you probably can deduce that the first one is the spiritual aspect of it.
Having said that, Quran refer to the Jews and Christians as "People of the Book"[1], and that's the main reason some of their rulings are acceptable in Islam. Another fun fact is that "Moses" is mentioned by name more than any other prophet names including "Muhammad" inside the Quran [2][3], and there is also one Chapter "Mary" referring to the Jesus' mother.
Muslim and Jewish dietary law are both interpreted in various ways by various authorities (and, of course, adherents follow those laws to various degrees of strictness). So any blanket statement on the subject is going to be incomplete.
Under the strictest rules for each, halal meats cannot be kosher and vice versa, because the slaughter must be carried out by a member of the religion. The physical requirements for the initial slaughter are essentially identical. But it's not uncommon for Muslims to view kosher meat as acceptable, at least as an alternative (and there's scriptural basis for this).
The reverse really isn't possible because there are more restrictions on how kosher meat is handled after slaughter , most notably the removal of certain fatty tissues, nerves, and veins. More info on that here:
I can't speak for halal, but kosher is not about blessings. In the case of meat, there are a myriad of rules that regulate the production, starting from animal selection (only a kosher species, and then only an animal that meets certain health criteria - a cow with a punctured lung may not be eaten), then the slaughter technique and procedure, then the removal of specific parts of the animal that may not be eaten, salting to remove the blood, and ultimately preparation (no mixing with dairy, etc).
I have no idea, while I'm no expert in religion I'm positively ignorant about science. But I'll answer anyway.
1) There are a few precepts in the bible that are very much aligned with modern understanding of medicine, such as the law that forbids leaving human feces around (soldiers are to carry a spade among their tools, and to leave camp to defecate and then bury their feces). There are many rules that are aligned with ancient superstitions that may have been thought to be about health (think purity laws) and others that prescribe behaviors that can cause illness (incest). That said, the bible generally does not give safety or health as a reason for a prohibition. Rules are listed with no reason at all, or with an explanation of "purity" or "God will turn His back on you if you leave disgusting things like feces around, and then you'll lose the war". So if indeed these rules were created for health and safety, it's unclear to me if the authors knew that that was the reason or if they were just cargo-culting and guessing.
2) To contemporary devotees of Judaism, pretty much everything I wrote in the previous paragraph is blasphemous. Some would take a harder line than others, but among people who keep the rules strictly (ie not those who kinda-sorta keep the "spirit" of the rules), the attitude is that these things are not up for renegotiation based on new science because _they are not based on science at all_. The reason they do these things is that the literature tells them to, which essentially means that God says so. Why did God say so? For any number of reasons, but probably not because of health or safety. Regardless, getting into God's mind is an interesting academic exercise, and one that occupies a place in "softer" rabbinic literature, but not particularly relevant for the "hard" technical literature that is busy with understanding the rules.
tl;dr: there may be something to that, but many religious people would be offended by the idea that these laws are mere health recommendations.
Note: I wrote this off-the-cuff, if you're interested in sources leave a comment and I'll dig some up.
Kosher slaughter is extra cruel/inhumane. The animal is not stunned during slaughter, while its neck is cut and it is bled out. No good reason what so ever for this practice to be allowed to continue in 2020, other than outdated religious dogma.
[Edit]
Since I'm already getting downvoted for this comment. Go look up some videos if you don't believe.
That is simply inaccurate and Kosher killing has always had humanity in animal killing front and centre, even far before the concept of treating animals humanely became widespread in human societies. The notion that an animal should be electrically shocked so that it is “stunned” before being killed is a matter for debate and is not definitely more or less humane.
There is often room for improvements, including reducing pre-slaughter stress, but when done right kosher slaughter is among the most humane forms of killing an animal. For example, with a skilled _shochet_ a cow can collapse within 10 seconds and not react at all to the cut itself. The requirements for even the sharpness of the knife are paramount, such that the animal feel no/a minimum of pain. Contrast this with the overwhelming majority of slaughterhouses, both today and over human history, and I hope you’ll see that kosher animal killing is far different from what you described above.
Let me try to steelman it for you: unless we assume God exists in the particular way a given religion says, religion dogma makes a debate around ethical animal slaughtering too inflexible. It is highly unlikely that either kosher or halal rites maximize ethical treatment beyond any chance of improvement (unless you assume divine guidance, obviously), and neither religion is very open to revisit dogma at the pace that ethical understanding of how animals ought to be treated, outside of a religious framework, evolves. Thus, we can consider religious views here as roadblocks.
Any individual view on the religious merits of kosher slaughter isn’t necessary in determining its humaneness. The facts stand on their own. There is of course a separate discussion to be had on the value of ritual slaughter to an individual or group’s religious expression, but I think that needn’t be considered in order to determine that animal killing according to kosher laws is not an inhumane method of killing an animal, and it’s rules of slaughter were among the first and most enduring form of an animal welfare.
Also tangential to this entire conversation is the merit/morality of animal consumption whatsoever, and whether it can be morally defended in the modern context, but I think that’s also best left for another day.
Ok, but the fact that kosher rights were “first to the party” does not inform us about whether they are the optimum solution; at most, to the fact that their position, given that we have globally approached it over the years, might be partially good.
And, as you touch upon, religious rites do not (solely) search for the solution that is most humane for the animal; they also take into consideration the religious value of the experience for third parties. But that means that, all else being equal, secular slaughtering processes, as they do not seek ritual values, should be more free to converge to the most humane solution.
The optimum solution might very well cost a billion dollars. A search for optimum while criticizing everything else seems like it's letting the perfect get in the way of the good.
> secular slaughtering processes, as they do not seek ritual values, should be more free to converge to the most humane solution.
Ok, but is there any reason it would converge to a humane solution at all? How strong is the market pressure in that direction? Jewish people are willing to pay a price premium to get a specific type of slaughter. Are secular people willing to pay a similarly-large price premium to get humane slaughter?
That’s a good point. I would be more inclined to argue that people, individually, would not pay the premium of ethical slaughter. But on the other hand there is a growing tendency to consider the impact of eating animals, to the point that McDonalds is adding vegetable burgers to their menus (as shared here yesterday).
Most people would agree (in principle, not in observed behavior) that torture and murder are both wrong, as is torture before the few minutes before death.
Please try to read posts charitatively, it adds up to better conversations. We all have limited time.
The point was that most people see torture plus murder worse than a quick murder, and that should be clearly analogous to your ironic cite, that I read as pointing out the supposed hypocrisy of making a slauthering “ethical”. Different ways to kill, be it human or animal, even if we agree they are unethical, are not unethical in the same degree.
> Thus, we can consider religious views here as roadblocks.
I agree, but politically shortcutting through religious blocs tends to be impossible. If it wasn't we would have been rid of those roadblocks when we killed god. 240 years later, those roadblocks are still in place, what tools of reason can we use to circumvent them as well as possible?
> That is simply inaccurate and Kosher killing has always had humanity in animal killing front and centre
This is absolute nonsense.
> even far before the concept of treating animals humanely became widespread in human societies.
There you go. The idea of "humanity" of animals doesn't exist in christianity, judaism or islam. It's really a modern concept that animals should even be treated humanely at all.
> There is often room for improvements, including reducing pre-slaughter stress, but when done right kosher slaughter is among the most humane forms of killing an animal.
A shot to the skull is. It is instantaneous. Not 10 seconds of gasping for blood as the cow bleeds out.
If you've ever read the bible, there is nothing there about the ethical treatment of animals. The concept simply didn't exist back then. Kosher is simply about what a group of people thought was "icky" animals/food and draining blood out of the animal.
The views of modern world amaze me. In last century, we fought against gender descrimination, then race descrimation (and still continued). Long way to go when time will come to fight against national identity and then planetary.
I am still waiting for time when humanity starts treating animals equally. It doesn't make sense how your race/gender/creed descrimation is different than animal. Only because they can't talk your language, it doesn't mean they don't have feelings or dosnt suffer.
When that generation will come, they will look down us the way we look at slavery in previous centuries.
Problem I have with all of it is the black-white thinking. You are either vegetarian, or you are not. You are either vegan, or you are not. Whereas you simply aren't, depending on how far you stretch the definition. If it comes to giving up and alienating people for being imperfect, I believe that is harmful. Hence I applaud reducetarianism. Either way, however far you take it, the direct connection between eating meat and animal suffering is easier and easier for an individual to work around. Because society is getting more and more vegetarian and vegan friendly.
Imagine if people took a reducetarian attitude toward murder. It doesn't make a lot of sense, which is why people choose one big moral lie over self-awarely violating their own morality every day.
> Imagine if people took a reducetarian attitude toward murder.
Why not? Imagine we are murdering thousands of people every day. We're able to reduce this by say 50%. How is that not an achievement?
Compare it to slavery. What if we are able to have slaves live with more freedom than the status quo? What if we are able to liberate 50% of all slaves? Isn't that commendable?
Again, you step right into the bifurcation (black and white thinking) trap.
We do take a reducetarian approach to murder, it's called ethical warfare. For a number of reasons most people accept that warfare is a reality today, despite wishing it wouldn't happen. Even so, they attempt to minimize the damage where possible, and they attempt to create rules limiting how evil war should get.
But will it come? Human is the top predator on this planet,no other animal comes even remotely close. We are hard to hunt, have lots of sneaky ways to avoid danger and cause maximum harm to those who try to use us as food. Personally I think the only reason that could change it would be some global phenomenon that would result in very limited options growing animals. Maybe then we'd go to making protein bars and animal killing would be a distant memory.
And I was very surprised that in my country (non-Islamic, non-Jewish) most of the meat produced is using kosher/halal way because we export most of it.
It is quite sad, because I don't think making animals suffer is a good way to go :(
I’m not sure about Kosher, but for meat to be considered Halal - it has to be treated well and not suffer. If the animal suffers it is rendered non-halal. Halal meat is more humane than widely used slaughter methods.
There is misconception among non-Muslims that halal doesn’t support modern slaughter methods, but it actually adapts to work with it. ~60% of all halal meat in the UK is stunned, whilst 0% of kosher meat is. Please do not conflate the two to push an agenda. The only source used throughout this thread is Grandin and not actually looking at the industry itself.
Islam also favors vegetarianism due to the sunnah of the prophet eating only what is required and not have elaborate meals of extravagance and food wastage but we aren’t ready for that conversation in a capitalist society (Less consumption = lower profits)
I’m an Indian Muslim (born and raised in KSA), and while the source is from a PETA website it’s what we’ve practiced. You can independently look up the Hadith (narrations) and see if they are valid.
Although modern Muslims have become a lot more meat dependent due to modern agriculture practices (as have most societies regardless of faith), I would argue that for Muslims vegetarianism or moderation in meat consumption isn’t a repugnant idea as it is for most folks in the west.
I am guessing here, but in South America? Temple Grandin wrote a wonderful (and terrifying) essay about the Kosher/Halal industry and it was pretty eye-opening.
I disagree. It seems significantly more humane than the mass slaughterhouses in the midwestern US. It’s so bad there they actually made it illegal to video.
I have been to both generic and kosher slaughterhouses on two continents. I suggest you do the same, it is incredibly instructive.
In my anecdotal experience, if I had to be a cow or a chicken, I would MUCH rather be in a kosher slaughterhouse. Better terms before, and what appears to me (the observer) as a much less painful death - in one case I wasn't sure if the cow knew he was slaughtered.
Videos are generally posted by people with an axe to ground, and can never be taken in context. The process takes too long to make a good video.
Am I subjective? Well, yeah probably. So are you. But I suspect you would agree if you checked it out. (Note - slaughterhouses are dangerous places, and cameras are not welcome. If you do go, don't be an idiot.)
Interestingly, when it comes to hunting, a more skilled hunter causes less suffering than an incompetent one.
A shot through both lungs and heart is not a particularly difficult feat to a patient and practiced hunter, and quickly kills an animal. Maybe it's even more humane than the methods used on cattle, especially when you consider the feedlot conditions leading up to the slaughter.
I don't know why, but that makes me really happy for some reason. They live a simple life with certain values they strive for. Buying LED tail lights does not in anyway interfere with that.
The Amish have always had this relationship with modern technology. The communities carefully consider which things to adopt based on how it will impact their way of life. It has nothing to do with their religious beliefs evolving. Even if that were the case, these are their own choices, not choices imposed on them by outsiders.
Forcing people to either violate their beliefs or become vegetarians over some fussy, ultramodern fixation on animal rights? Seems close to persecution to me.
I see no problem in challenging cultural/religious norms and traditions if the argument is made in good faith, and I have no reason to believe the poster was acting from a position of bad faith.
We can then decide if the argument is sound and we agree with it, or disagree with it.
There are plenty of such customs and norms I disagree with myself, for example the catholic ban on divorce (at least they do not excommunicate divorcees anymore; banned in the Philippines for anybody except Muslims), their ban on contraceptives in particular condoms (see: HIV), their ban of abortions ([1]) or their stance on gay rights. I think I have good reasons to disagree and that every example I listed has real world implications negatively affecting people and not just because they chose to follow Catholic norms.
Do I feel I am persecuting the Catholic Church? No.
Using the word "fussy" while we are talking about literally getting killed is an interesting choice of words, considering the injustice both sides get.
The difference here is between beliefs on one side and physical pain and abuse on the other.
You only let the beliefs take precedence when you consider humans to be above animals. This is a vicious cycle of religious dogma.
What about halal? Would it make a broader impact protesting halal butchering given that amount of animals slaughtered in that way is thousands times higher?
A video will merely allow me to better visualize what may look to be an extra/cruel or inhumane method of slaughter, but it wont back up your statement that it is truly inhumane.
In other words, ritual slaughter may be more gory, but it isn't necessarily more painful for the animal.
Sad you are being downvoted for saying a truism, since if it were a Christian dogma the same people would upvote you instead.
I’ll add that nowadays the problem of kosher and hallal meat price is "solved" this way: most animals are killed using one of those rites, and the meat surplus is sold as non-kosher and non-hallal to unsuspecting users. This is something some people advocate to change (speaking of France here) since hallal meat is funding mosquees and other for the safety/animal wellbeing point of view, but entrenched religious lobbying made it fail so far.
This isn't true; Temple Grandin, one of the preeminent scholars of animal welfare during slaughtering, has said that Kosher slaughter can be as painless as stunned slaughtering.
Err, since she criticizes a (non-essential ritual) practice in certain kosher south American slaughterhouses, that means "in practice it is not"? What wide expertise do you have in shechita?
To explain further; in shechita, the animal needs to be restrained when it is cut. Some kosher slaughterhouses did this with a "shackle and hoist" method. This is not a classical shechita technique, but one added for "production line" purposes. It scares the animal, and should be discouraged. In fact, it is banned in Israel.
"For over twenty years I have been actively involved in improving animal welfare during kosher slaughter. When animal welfare is being evaluated, one must carefully separate the variable of how the animal is restrained from the variable of throat cutting without stunning. These are two separate issues. My work has focused on replacing the cruel shackling and hoisting procedure with a more comfortable method of holding the animals prior to shehita. When a stressful method of restraint is used, it is impossible to evaluate the animal's reaction to the shehita cut because the animal is kicking and bellowing from the stress of the restraint methods.
After I had designed and operated a better restraining device to hold the cattle in a comfortable upright position, I was amazed to observe that the animal did not appear to feel the cut. My work has focused on improving the methods used to hold the animals. I have never attacked shehita. In fact many of my articles support shehita.
Over the years I have worked with many wonderful shochets and rabbis. I totally respect these very sincere people. Rabbi Abe Rine had been a great supporter of my work and when he died it was a great loss to animal welfare and religious slaughter. I have worked with many shochets who were grateful to have the new systems. Eliminating shackling and hoisting of conscious live cattle improves both animal welfare and personal safety for the rabbis and shochets."
The title and conclusions of the article are entirely unsubstantiated:
"The spirit and grassroots tactics of the Great Kosher Meat Strike of 1902 would be applied successfully in the early decades of the century in rent strikes, community protests, labor actions, and suffrage demonstrations. "
In fact, as the Wikipedia 'boycott' entry shows, while boycotts have been used since ancient times (notably, the American boycott of English goods at the time of the American revolution) the term "Boycott" was born in Ireland in the 1880s and quickly spread around the world; there is no indication in the article itself that this particular instance was either the first or remarkable or that it left any lasting legacy.
Fascinating. I can’t say for sure one of my great-grandmothers participated in this, but I can’t rule it out. I had two great-grandmothers living in the lower east side then. Ethel arrived in 1892 with her family from Pinsk, Belarus and would have been 17. Her mom Annie would have been 36.
It could have also been my great-grandmother Rachel who’d arrived in 1897 with her family from Romania. She would’ve been too young in 1902 (13), but her mother Esther would’ve been old enough.
The slaughterhouse bosses, not the rabbis, were the ones who raised prices to increase profits after agreeing with other slaughterhouses to divide the territory and fix prices.
The rabbis were brought in to negotiate with the slaughterhouse bosses. They were not conspiring with them.
"Although many of the women had been in the United States for only a short time and could not manage much English, they had already grasped the power of that most American form of expression: protest"
i'm sorry, what ?? Does the writer truely believe people in eastern europe at the turn of the 20th century didn't know how to protest ?? Has he ever heard of anarchism and communism ?
>> Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads.
A crap link is one that's only superficially interesting. Stories on HN don't have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting.
What does "deeply interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, perhaps it could be. <<
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
"Their parcels of meat were confiscated, hurled into the gutters and sometimes doused with kerosene. Butchers were goaded into closing, and those who refused were attacked. Their inventory was destroyed and in many cases their windows and fixtures were smashed. "
So it's okay if they do it, but not okay when it's done upon them?
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I don't get the point of the article, they want a product includes more labor, more time and more duty to a select, niche, market -
"Of course, not only kosher meat was affected. Prices rose for everyone. But the Jews were the first to feel the heat because kosher meat was more expensive. Prices had to reflect not only the wages of slaughterers and religious supervisors, but also the cost of transporting live cattle to New York. Because kosher meat had to be salted and soaked in the home within 72 hours of slaughter, it could not, like the non-kosher variety, be killed in Chicago and shipped more cheaply as a carcass."
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"As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle put it at the time, the women “seem to have imbibed a fundamental principle of Americanism as quickly as any earlier [immigrants] did. They decided that they were unjustly taxed, or charged, which amounts to the same thing for the person who pays, and they went out to find a means to remedy the injustice."
I disagree, it's more labour intensive, it's not unjust. Consumers demanded meat a certain way, and then refused to pay more for the product as it was more labor intensive, more transportation intensive, and have specific rituals associated with it.
Very disgusting piece of history imo and only further trains social behavior of being angry and making sure no one else has if it you can't. Normal meat was affordable, they decided they wanted to force business to reduce prices of kosher meat which is more labor and transport intensive. That's not okay.
Go re-read the article. The anger wasn't that kosher meat was more expensive than non-kosher. Rather it was that the price was hiked 50% in a short time. As a result of collusion among meat packers.
As far as their tactics are concerned, article deals with that as well. Sympathetic reports still regarded their actions as "censurable", even if their motives were worthy.
> Those who insisted on entering the shops were heckled and, on their departure, assaulted. Their parcels of meat were confiscated, hurled into the gutters and sometimes doused with kerosene. Butchers were goaded into closing, and those who refused were attacked. Their inventory was destroyed and in many cases their windows and fixtures were smashed.
It's not really a boycott if it's by force
It's also not clear if they really had an real impact given
> The Justice Department of “trust-buster” President Theodore Roosevelt had taken note, and on May 10, the very day the kosher butchers had first shut down, took the packers to court to force them to cease their illegal practices.
In other words the government had independently started suing before the influence of this group.
Still super interesting.