Exploitation Isn't Kosher (by Allison Johnson)
Kosher law forbids you from boiling a calf in its mother's milk. But how are human mothers who work in slaughterhouses being treated? In the wake of revelations about the working conditions at kosher slaughterhouses, some rabbis are demanding a higher standard of worker treatment -- and they're willing to lay down the law. It is estimated that more than 350,000 U.S. households keep kosher, or follow the strict set of dietary laws outlined by the Hebrew Bible. Before the May immigration raids in Postville, Iowa, the Agriprocessors plant there run by an Orthodox family supplied 60 percent of the nation's kosher beef and 40 percent of the kosher poultry.
Stories are pouring out of Postville about the inhumane treatment of the immigrant workers. Underage workers were arrested in the raids, some as young as 13. Many workers were forced to put in overtime without extra pay or breaks. Vulnerable people were exploited by religious business owners who systematically violated immigration and workplace laws. Rabbi Morris Allen had firsthand experience with the workers and their conditions in Postville and decided a moral response was necessary.
His alternative certification philosophy is rising in popularity and has been endorsed by several progressive Jewish groups. Hekhsher Tzedek, which means "certificate of righteousness" in Hebrew, goes a step beyond current kosher guidelines. An additional seal of approval on existing kosher meat products would mean it was processed and packaged in compliance with a set of social justice criteria in keeping with the teachings of the Jewish faith, including wages and benefits, workplace safety, environmental impact, and corporate transparency.
Many people may not have known about the worker injustices at a meat plant in a small Iowa town, but the raid has sent aftershocks felt by those who keep kosher at the dinner table. The Boston Globe published an article about the differing opinions of Orthodox and Conservative Jews on the issue and responses to Rabbi Allen's proposed certification. If anything, the Postville raid has opened up conversations about how people of faith look at the products they consume and the value we place on the treatment of those who prepare it. We should not allow this issue to focus on just the kosher meat industry. Rather, we should be compelled to look at where all our food comes from and explore ways to spend our dollars that support businesses that treat their employees with dignity and value justice in the workplace.
Allison Johnson is the policy and organizing assistant for Sojourners.
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Comments
So - if there were no illegal immigrats to be hired this company would have to either close or hire US citizens that pay taxes and this company could not get away with doing this.
More likely they would have hired US citizens and still not paid them minimum wage still had unsafe conditions. These were opportunistic businessmen looking to maximize profit in a state with week labor law enforcement. The poor in a small town have few choices and few defenses.
If we just allowed more legal immigration the works would be more likely to complain and stop this exploitation.
Posted by: Doc | July 31, 2008 1:08 PM
what is explot? is it paying a wage that one is willing to work for? is it not paying ot on more than 40 hours a week? but what if they have two jobs should they be paid ot on the time over the cummultive 40 hours. how many people applied to be explotied? when walmart opened outside of chicago there were over 1200 applicants to be exploted for 300 positions of explotment. roger
Posted by: roger | July 31, 2008 3:15 PM
We have legal immigration - that is not the problem.
Note that I said *more* immigration. Have you ever tried to get someone legally into the US with all the quotas and restrictions? There are so many hurdles it is not surprising people choose to hurdle the border illegally. I don't buy the taking citizen's job arguments either. We have had 10+ years of historicly low unemployment, levels that most economists agree we can't get below (4.5-5%). Or, even if we did instantly deport all 12M illegal aliens, we don't have 12M legal residents who are looking for employment to fill those jobs. If you want to grow the economy you have to grow the labor pool, if you don't allow that to occur legally, they will find other ways to get here, and bad people will exploit them.
what is exploit? Low wages was one of the lessor problems in Iowa. The real problems were extreme numbers of hours with poor safety conditions which when combined caused people to die!
Posted by: Doc | July 31, 2008 4:00 PM
Too bad the Christian tradition doesn't include the concept of kosher. Then we American Christians might have a similar national conversation about what we eat and how it relates to our faith. I guess our religion as practiced makes it too easy not to care.
Posted by: I and I | July 31, 2008 6:06 PM
I think they would have treated anyone in an inhuman manner. They might have gotten bolder because it was immigrants. No matter whether it is immigrants or Americans it is disgusting and morally wrong to treat workers in this manner. The fact that they are religious makes it ten times worse because in their private lives they are proclaiming to be children of GOD who do His biding. They can hide from man but not from God.
Posted by: Elissa | July 31, 2008 6:07 PM
Is killing kosher?
According to the Bible, God intended the entire human race to follow a vegetarian diet (Genesis 1:29). Paradise is vegetarian. Rashi (Rabbi Solomon von Isaac, 1030-1105), the famous Jewish Bible commentator, taught that "God did not permit Adam and his wife to kill a creature and to eat its flesh. Only every green herb shall they all eat together." Ibn Ezra and other Jewish biblical commentators agree.
According to the Talmud, "Adam and many generations that followed him were strict flesh-abstainers; flesh-foods were rejected as repulsive for human consumption." Although man was made in God's image and given dominion over all creation (Genesis 1:26-28), these verses do not justify humans killing animals and devouring them, because God immediately proclaims He created the plants for human consumption. (Genesis 1:29)
In a letter to Pope John Paul II, challenging him on the issue of animal experimentation, Dr. Michael Fox of the Humane Society argued that the word "dominion" is derived from the original Hebrew word "rahe" which refers to compassionate stewardship, instead of power and control. Parents have dominion over their children; they do not have a license to kill, torment or abuse them. The Talmud (Shabbat 119; Sanhedrin 7) interprets "dominion" to mean animals may be used for labor.
Man was made in God's image (Genesis 1:26) and told to be vegetarian (Genesis 1:29). "And God saw all that He had made and saw that it was very good." (Genesis 1:31) Complete and perfect harmony. Everything in the beginning was the way God wanted it. Vegetarianism was part of God's initial plan for the world.
"It appears that the first intention of the Maker was to have men live on a strictly vegetarian diet," writes Rabbi Simon Glazer, in his 1971 Guide to Judaism. "The very earliest periods of Jewish history are marked with humanitarian conduct towards the lower animal kingdom...It is clearly established that the ancient Hebrews knew, and perhaps were the first among men to know, that animals feel and suffer pain."
After the Flood, God revised His commandment against flesh-eating. Human beings, since eating of the forbidden fruit, seemed incapable of obedience on this issue. One Jewish writer comments, "Only after man had proven unfit for the high moral standard given at the beginning, was meat made a part of the humans' diet."
In their book, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, Dennis Prager and Rabbi Telushkin explain: "Keeping kosher is Judaism's compromise with its ideal vegetarianism. Ideally, according to Judaism, man would confine his eating to fruits and vegetables and not kill animals for food."
In his excellent A Guide to the Misled, Rabbi Shmuel Golding explains the orthodox Jewish position concerning animal sacrifices: "When G-d gave our ancestors permission to make sacrifices to Him, it was a concession, just as when He allowed us to have a king (I Samuel 8), but He gave us a whole set of rules and regulations concerning sacrifice that, when followed, would be superior to and distinct from the sacrificial system of the heathens."
Some biblical passages denounce animal sacrifice (Isaiah 1:11,15; Amos 5:21-25). Other passages state that animal sacrifices, not necessarily incurring God's wrath, are unnecessary (I Kings 15:22; Jeremiah 7:21-22; Hosea 6:6; Hosea 8:13; Micah 6:6-8; Psalm 50:1-14; Psalm 40:6; Proverbs 21:3; Ecclesiastes 5:1).
Sometimes Christians cite Isaiah 1:11, where God says, "I am full of the burnt offerings..." The word "full" implies God accepted the sacrifices. However, in Isaiah 43:23-24, God says: "You have not honored Me with your sacrifices...rather you have burdened Me with your sins, you have wearied Me with your iniquities." This suggests, as Moses Maimonides taught and Rabbi Shmuel Golding confirms above, that "the sacrifices were a concession to barbarism."
Jesus taught his disciples to pray for the coming of God's kingdom (Matthew 6:9-10), the kingdom of peace, in which the entire world is restored to a vegetarian paradise (Genesis 1:29; Isaiah 11:6-9). Recalling Psalm 37:11, he blessed the meek, saying they would inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5) The kingdom of God belongs to the gentle and kind (Matthew 5:7-9) Christians are to "Be merciful, just as your Father is also merciful." (Luke 6:36) Those who take up the sword must perish by the sword. (Matthew 26:52)
Jesus spoke of God's tender care for the nonhuman creation (Matthew 6:26-30, 10:29-31; Luke 12:6-7, 24-28). Jesus taught that God desires "mercy and not sacrifice." (Matthew 9:10-13, 12:6-7; Mark 2:15-17; Luke 5:29-32) The epistle to the Hebrews 10:5-10 suggests that Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and the prophets, but only the institution of animal sacrifice, as does Jesus' cleansing the Temple of those who were buying and selling animals for sacrifice and his overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple. (Matthew 21:12-14; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46; John 2:14-17)
Jesus not only repeatedly upheld Mosaic Law (Matthew 5:17-19; Mark 10:17-22; Luke 16:17), he justified his healing on the Sabbath by referring to commandments calling for the humane treatment of animals.
When teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, Jesus healed a woman who had been ill for eighteen years. He justified his healing work on the Sabbath by referring to biblical passages calling for the humane treatment of animals as well as their rest on the Sabbath. "So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham...be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?" Jesus asked. (Luke 13:10-16)
On another occasion, Jesus again referred to Torah teaching on "tsa'ar ba'alei chayim" or compassion for animals to justify healing on the Sabbath. "Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?" (Luke 14:1-5)
Jesus compared saving sinners who had gone astray from God's kingdom to rescuing lost sheep. He recalled a Jewish legend about Moses' compassion as a shepherd for his flock. (Luke 15:3-7,10)
Jesus insisted upon the moral standards given by God in the beginning (Matthew 5:31-32, 19:3-9; Mark 10:2-12; Luke 16:18), and this did not go unnoticed by early church fathers such as St. Jerome.
From history, too, we learn that the earliest Christians were vegetarians as well as pacifists. For example, Clemens Prudentius, the first Christian hymn writer, in one of his hymns exhorts his fellow Christians not to pollute their hands and hearts by the slaughter of innocent cows and sheep, and points to the variety of nourishing and pleasant foods obtainable without blood-shedding.
Some of the most distinguished figures in the history of Christianity have been vegetarian. A partial list includes: St. James, St. Matthew, Clemens Prudentius, Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, St. Basil, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, St. Benedict, Aegidius, Boniface, St. Richard of Wyche, St. Columba, St. Filipo Neri, John Wray, Thomas Tryon, John Wesley, Joshua Evans, William Metcalfe, General William Booth, Ellen White, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, and Reverend V.A. Holmes-Gore.
Reverend Marc Wessels of the International Network for Religion and Animals (INRA) writes:
"The most important teaching which Jesus shared was the need for people to love God with their whole self and to love their neighbor as they loved themselves. Jesus expanded the concept of neighbor to include those who were normally excluded, and it is therefore not too farfetched for us to consider the animals as our neighbors.
"To think about animals as our brothers and sisters is not a new or radical idea. By extending the idea of neighbor, the love of neighbor includes love of, compassion for, and advocacy of animals. There are many historical examples of Christians who thought along those lines, besides the familiar illustration of St. Francis. An abbreviated listing of some of those individuals worthy of study and emulation includes Saint Blaise, Saint Comgall, Saint Cuthbert, Saint Gerasimus, Saint Giles, and Saint Jerome, to name but a few."
According to contemporary Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast:
"...the survival of our planet depends on our sense of belonging---to all other humans, to dolphins caught in dragnets, to pigs and chickens and calves raised in animal concentration camps, to redwoods and rainforests, to kelp beds in our oceans, and to the ozone layer."
In a sermon preached in York Minster, September 28, 1986, John Austin Baker, the Bishop of Salisbury, England, attacked the overcrowded confinement methods of raising and killing animals for food ("factory farming"), choosing as his example, the treatment of chickens:
"Is there any credit balance for the battery hen, denied almost all natural functioning, all normal environment, lapsing steadily into deformity and disease, for the whole of her existence?" he asked. "It is in the battery shed and the broiler house, not in the wild, that we find the true parallel to Auschwitz. Auschwitz is a purely human invention."
Rick Dunkerly of Christ Lutheran Church says:
"The Bible-believing Christian, should, of all people, be on the frontline in the struggle for animal welfare and rights. We who are Christians should be treating the animal creation now as it will be treated then, at Christ's second coming. It will not now be perfect, but it must be substantial, otherwise we have missed our calling, and we grieve the One we call 'Lord,' who was born in a stable surrounded by animals simply because He chose it that way."
Rose Evans, editor and publisher of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a "consistent-ethic" periodical on the religious Left, says there are more Christian vegetarians than Jewish vegetarians. Yet some people still react to the idea of Christian vegetarianism as though it were an oxymoron.
"Every year," says Reverend Andrew Linzey, author of Christianity and the Rights of Animals, "I receive hundreds of anguished letters from Christians who are so distressed by the insensitivity to animals shown by mainstream churches that they have left them or are on the verge of doing so...The time is long overdue to take the issue of animal rights to the churches...
"I derive hope from the Gospel preaching that the same God who draws us to such affinity and intimacy with suffering creatures declared that reality on a Cross in Calvary. Unless all Christian preaching has been utterly mistaken, the God who becomes incarnate and crucified is the one who has taken the side of the oppressed and the suffering of the world--however the churches may actually behave."
Posted by: Vasu Murti | July 31, 2008 6:26 PM
The illegal aliens are the real criminals. The animals they slaughter had no choce. The illegal aliens can end their abuse by simply going back home. You have lost the moral high ground by weeping over the exploiters who slaughter sentient animals for sub-minimum wages.
When will Christians regard specieism with the same moral disdain as racism? When will they regard the suffering of "the least of these?" When will Christians regard the suffering of live sentient non-human animals as highly as they do the human embryo or fetus?
John Wesley asked candidates for the clergy, "Are you going on to perfection?" The implication is that, if you're not, where are you going? Do Christians wish to smash this last barrier to empathy? Yes? When?
I commend to you the patience to read Vasu Murti's posting to this site as a well-researched Biblical rebuke to this shallow concern for exploitation of illegal immigrants.
Jerald Cogswell
Posted by: Jerald Cogswell | July 31, 2008 10:00 PM
Let's look at this from another perspective. The root problem here is that humanity has set up money as a false idol, just as ancient Israel had their worship in the high places and other acts detestible in the sight of God. Today, many will do anything in pursuit of the almighty dollar (yen, Euro, etc.) including hiring those so desperate for work they will take whatever they can get no matter how pitiful the recompence and dangerous the conditions. Blaming the immigrant is an interesting twist. Nobody goes anywhere if there isn't opportunity waiting. Blaming those who respond to businesses that seek them out and lure them in is blaming victims. So much for treating the foreigner in your midst well. Of course, the same thing happened in the deep South around the time of the American Civil War. Poor Southerners would have loved to have paying jobs on plantations to feed their families but those jobs were being performed by slaves. Planters were outnumbered by poor Southerners many times over and worried about the building anger among them. So, what did they do? They redirected that anger against the slaves. They blamed the victim. Some things never change. I wager God finds this also detestible in God's sight!
Have a nice day!
Posted by: J.S. Brooks | August 1, 2008 7:17 AM
I am dismayed to find so many xenophobic comments in a forum intended for people of faith. Is our compassion as fraudulent as that of our "compassionate" conservative President? These "illegal aliens" are our neighbors. As individuals, they are worthy of respect, even though they are all sinners like the rest of us. One can debate the root causes of illegal immigration till the cows come home, but that discussion belongs in some other forum. People are never "illegal", even though their actions sometimes are.
Posted by: Edward Syrett | August 4, 2008 12:55 AM
"You have lost the moral high ground by weeping over the exploiters who slaughter sentient animals for sub-minimum wages. When will Christians regard specieism with the same moral disdain as racism?"
Are you suggesting we should pressure the kosher slaughterhouses to grant equal opportunity to pigs?
Posted by: I and I | August 5, 2008 1:48 PM
Dear I and I:
I hope you are not so ignorant of Judaism and the Bible to even think that there is such a thing as a Kosher pig.
Nevertheless, I sense that my core message was obscured by my hyperbole. My message was not to create hate or xenophobia for a narrow group of people. I was asking readers to read and respond to the well researched essay by Vasu Murti (see above). Does anyone here see who the real victims are in this discussion? It's the animals who were raised in factory farms and transported in heat and/or cold on trucks like -- like -- cattle. I'm trying to raise the ethical standard of this discussion by elevating the helpless; the animals.
If nobody on this blog has read Peter Singer's book Animal Liberation, or similar animal rights literature, then I guess my ethical concern falls on deaf ears. Have you not looked into an animal's eyes and seen something of yourself?
Is this blog about discussing Biblical ethics or simply a religious facade for La Rasa organization?
Jerald
Posted by: Jerald Cogswell | August 5, 2008 9:05 PM
Welcome to the blog, Jerald. As you will soon realize, humorous remarks do surface from time to time so expect it and don't just assume ignorance. But you are right that hyperbole will tend to obscure a commenter's points. I'm in favor of humane treatment of animals and rarely eat meat myself partly for this reason--however, you came across as a blowhard that would rather blame the exploited workers than the wealthy slaughterhouse owners for the inhumane treatment of the animals. Put responsibility where it belongs: those who perpetuate the industry, not desperate families who see no other way to put food on their tables. That's all I'll say.
Posted by: I and I | August 6, 2008 1:48 PM
P.S. Jerald, I need to give credit where it's due and say you did bring up some good points--for example recommending the Singer book. I went strict veggie in 1986 and it was an article by John Robbins that put me over the line to make the decision. In the early 90's I was recommending Jeremy Rifkin's "Beyond Beef" to others for the same reason. F. M. Lappe's "Diet for a Small Planet" still lays out a good case, even though she was a little mistaken about the importance of complimentary proteins.
Posted by: I and I | August 7, 2008 10:39 AM
Thanks, I and I, for your gentle response to my admittedly blunt comments. May I report that I am actually half Mexican? My mother's 1933 college yearbook picture appeared in a back section for "Colored Students." Her parents were legal immigrants who learned English and became Methodists. I lived in Hawaii for 22 years where there was a rich, mostly peaceful, mixture of ethnic groups. Xenophobia is not my motivator.
I'm sure this blog's members share my concern for the environment (or Creation Care, if you prefer). My grave concerns about immigration arise from the reality that poor immigrants adopt American consumer habits and join us five percent who consume 25 percent of the earth's energy. Water, land, and agricultural resources are under strain. Welcoming the stranger and sojourner presents a moral dilemma.
My message is that Americans are not able to help the billions of the world's poor by allowing more immigration. Our mission is to put pressure on the Mexican government and all corrupt governments to take care of the people that are entrusted to them. Simultaneously, we need to live simpler lives.
Posted by: Jerald | August 7, 2008 12:26 PM
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