schmo39
|
|
response 52 of 55:
| 
Jul 23 22:05 UTC 2003 |
Kosher slaughter laws were supposed to be a compromise that G-d made with man
to ensure that animals would suffer as little as possible in the process of
rendering their lives for our food.
Professor in Agricultural studies Dr. Temple Grandin notes that cattle will
readily walk into the restraint box in Kosher slaughtering plants
if treated kindly and that animals slaughtered under other conditions will
panic due to the postulated presence of a fear hormone. It seems that these
animals loose conciousness before they even have the chance to elicit the sort
of stress response that can be identified by smell of other animals.
In some cases of non-Kosher slaughter I've heard tales of animals being
skinned alive after 'stun' methods such as electroshock proved to be, shall
we say, 'less-than-effective.' The most ethical treatment of animals may be
not to eat them at all, but if one is to eat an animal, it may be safe to
assume that a Kosher-slaughtered animal is one that didn't suffer so much.
Thank you for reviewing my humble subission.
|
schmo39
|
|
response 54 of 55:
|
Jul 31 03:08 UTC 2003 |
BTW, the freferences for #52 were as follows:
G-d's comprimise (before flood, only plants were "food")... Genesis 9
Reference to Temple Grandin...
http://agriculture.de/acms1/conf6/ws5atransport.htm
(Cached copy exists on Google under "Animal Welfare during Transport and
Slaughter")
Temple Grandin's own website... http://www.grandin.com/
(And that was "compromise"... must be the BSE in the non-Kosher meat!)
Which brings us to....
It's just Offal What They're Feeding the Livestock These Days --and Boy Are
Those Cows Mad!
TSE's, or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, have been a
much-publicised problem since the 1990's. In spite of Oprah's exposee'
(http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/television/oprah_transcript.html)
and the ensuing trial (http://www.mad-cow.org/post_xmas.html) along with
her wining the law suit, band-aid solutions, at best, have been proposed to the
American Government (http://www.cspinet.org/reports/madcomnt.htm) and may
not stem the tide of the disease.
The practice of feeding dead animals, or offal, to other animals is a
particularly gruesome practice and the epidemiological vector of prion
transmission. (Prions being the causative agents of TSE's). Prions have no
DNA and are unaffected by radiation, oxidizing agents, or any other form of
sanitization that would not, essentially, reduce the "food" to greenhouse
gasses.
With this said, I am surprised that the culture that will not allow the
consumption of cheeseburgers as not to violate the 2nd part of Deuteronomy
14:21, would allow the practice of feeding cows offal-- as though it would
in some roundabout way not violate the FIRST part of that verse. And while
I can find no explicit injuction in the Torah against such a practice, I
should think that sommon sense would tell us that it's wrong for similar
reasons. In fact, the feeding of any sort of animal to a ruminant seems
unnatural and would seem to be, a priori, against G-d's Law.
Nevertheless, it seems that BSE can be bloodborne
(http://www.which.net/campaigns/food/meatsafety/misc/bserep0602.pdf), and
that Kosher slaughter may reduce the risks of transmission (Ibid, pg. 6;[ also
see http://www.shemayisrael.com/chareidi/archives5762/chukas/CK62amadcow.ht
m) although it may not eliminate the risk altogether.
|