Tza'ar Ba'alei Chayim
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
1. Based on Jewish holidays and traditions, I doubt "Tza'ar Ba'alei Chayim" was ever a factor. For example, in Yom Kippur one of the traditions called Kapparot is about swinging a live chicken over others' head. Example: https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2013/09/f111007...
2. The main reason today for kosher slaughter and kosher food in general is money. It's how the orthodox community in Israel makes money. It's a big industry that employs many orthodox people. Kosher restaurants in Israel need to pay money to get a kosher certificate. There are multiple organizations that can certify a place as kosher (some have more strict requirements than others). Those places usually visit those restaurants to inspect their kosherness similarly to food inspection everywhere else. (but their focus is only the kosher part, not the food quality). A restaurant can be 100% kosher but most religious people won't visit it unless it's certified kosher by somebody that meets their requirements.
For secular people in Israel the worse part about kosher restaurants is that they must be closed during Shabbat (Friday afternoon till Saturday evening). Basically, the religious parties in Israel want everything to be closed during that time (no public transit, no entertainment, restaurants, etc.)
What is your opinion about predators in the wild, murdering and eating sentient animals?
We have no control over what animals do, and part of being a good steward of nature is allowing animals to be animals. But as a human, it's difficult for me to accept that the intensive factory farming of chickens, cows, and pigs is necessary for my welfare.
And since I'm aware of other protein sources than meat, I feel that I have a duty to use those protein sources instead of meat. And if I can't use plant proteins, then I also have a duty to minimize the amount of animal protein that I consume, and to ensure that it doesn't end the life of the animal where I can.
This doesn't preclude me from hunting or from eating hunted meat if I need to, but hunting is very different from factory farming. My prey has a fighting chance. Rabbits, deer, bears, elk, mountain lions, etc. all have evolved in an environment where they may be hunted. They all have tools at their disposal to counteract my cunning. And to hunt a wild animal also means that I have to butcher the animal myself, meaning that I come face-to-face with the fact that I've ended an animal's life to stay alive.
Where do you draw the line of what's sporting? I think humanity's cunning is why we have domesticated animals and efficient slaughter houses.
>And to hunt a wild animal also means that I have to butcher the animal myself, meaning that I come face-to-face with the fact that I've ended an animal's life to stay alive.
I'd bet every slaughtered animal had a person watch it die. Or at least see it alive and know they'd be complicit in the slaughter.
I think it's when I'm having to do the work against the animal to catch it that's sporting. Driving to the grocery store and buying pre-packaged chunks of muscle isn't particularly sporting. It's not really cunning to stick 3000 chickens in a dark room, dump food on the floor periodically, and then vaccuum them all up after X months. It's industrial.
> I'd bet every slaughtered animal had a person watch it die. Or at least see it alive and know they'd be complicit in the slaughter.
This is true, but it's much easier to be complicit in something when it's as impersonal as watching as chickens which are hung from a gantry conveyor slowly make their way past a set of spinning blades which efficiently separate their head from their neck, and you're watching this process for hours a day.
It's tempting to say "Killing is always wrong," but the meat industry is more than just the moment of slaughter.
I don't mean to be dismissive, and I do believe that there are legitimate ethical and environmental (and maybe even health-related) motivations for being a vegetarian.
However, I don't see a problem with the slaughter itself, especially as practiced in modern societies. It is significantly more humane than most ways a lot of animals die in the wild, killed in a desparte struggle, or eaten away by disease.
The much bigger ethical problem is the way we force most of these animals to live in industrial settings, cooped up, filthy, unmoving. This is the true ethical dilemma of industrial farming.
Hopefully, if we stopped eating and throwing away the vast quantities of meat we do today, we could get back to more sustainable and more humane animal husbandry, while still being able to occasionally enjoy meat - to boot, it will even be much better tasting, if the animals are allowed to roam and eat grass.
A mostly instant death for most mammals in the woods is not in the same solar system as an industrial slaughterhouse in terms or experience for the animal.
And this is why I don't eat meat. If it were truly a stress-free and near-instant experience my opinions would be different.
Afraid you're mistaken.
See /r/natureismetal [0] -- or any nature documentary, for that matter -- and you'll see many animals are eaten while still alive. Predators tend to do the bare minimum to subdue their prey before devouring it. See how this eagle eats its prey [1], for example.
This is true of lions and wildebeest, sea lions and penguins, alligators and zebra, snakes with frogs, frogs with insects, and more. The prey is devoured while still alive.
[0]: http://reddit.com/r/natureismetal
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Natureisbrutal/comments/d3hgka/snak...
What woods are you hanging out in? Most animals I see get eaten are drowned, asphyxiated, bled out, poisoned, or just plain eaten alive. Some animals (raptors, cats) kill for sport, or to defend territory.
I agree that the way animals are treated by humans is disturbing and should be fixed, but an animal's life and death is tough even in nature. We should focus more on their quality of life, but death is death. (Incidentally, a calmer/quicker death creates more flavorful meat, so there's plenty of reason to be more humane)
And this is assuming they die by predator - otherwise, they may escape with a wound which gets infected, and they will get diseased, maggot ridden, and probably go hungry as well.
Nature rarely offers a peaceful death.
not jewish so commenting outside of my area, but, I think that when the practices were installed, the methods were the 'best available' (and so in line with this thinking), but the problem is that now there is so much tradition bound up with the practice that it's hard to install an alternative practice if one indeed is better (also not up on butchering, so cant comment here either)