Tza’ar ba’alei chaim among growing meat demand

Growing demand for meat worldwide sparks debate about ‘tza’ar ba’alei chaim’ – causing needless suffering to living creatures.

If the chickens, cows, and lambs that rendered the food on your dinner plate were slaughtered according to Jewish law in a manner that hastens death and minimizes pain but were bred, raised, and transported under conditions of stress and suffering, should those animals still be considered kosher?

There is little public awareness or debate about the question of whether factory farms – the origin of virtually all animals bound for (kosher and non-kosher) slaughter, as well as eggs and dairy – violate Torah laws in spirit, if not in letter.

While the world’s increasing demand for meat also raises concerns about halachic violations regarding human and environmental health and worker safety, this article narrows the lens to the injunction against tza’ar ba’alei chaim – causing needless suffering to living creatures. It’s the most obvious problem in animal agriculture and the most common reason cited by people who switch to a partially or fully plant-based diet.

The rabbinic opinions outlined below represent a range of views: avoiding animal products from a halachic perspective; avoiding specific animal products from an informed moral perspective; and keeping the primary halachic focus on the slaughterhouse rather than pre-slaughter conditions.

A principled approach

A Hebrew-language white paper released in 2018 by Beit Hillel, a national rabbinical organization dedicated to “strengthening Torah in the Israeli reality,” seeks to educate the public about factory-farming practices so that they can make informed ethical choices.

“In the past, animals were raised quite naturally, in close proximity to humans and in a way that did not harm the animals. Man used them for his needs, which included eating them. Today, it is not possible to satisfy human needs in this way,” the paper states. Population growth, industrialism, urbanism, higher incomes, and other worldwide trends “have led to a situation of a completely functional approach” to raising animals for meat, milk, and eggs, characterized by concentrated animal feeding operations colloquially known as factory farms.

“In the conditions in which animals are kept… they do not have the minimum space in which they can behave naturally, sometimes not even to move or lie down in a natural position, and chickens cannot walk and spread their wings.

“The intensive feeding of animals, aimed at making them grow faster than their natural growth, causes deformities in their legs; the crowded confinement conditions, when they wallow in their own excrement, cause diseases and serious injuries. Thus their entire lives are a series of severe suffering,” the paper explains.

Beit Hillel advocates a “principled approach,” acknowledging the Torah’s permission for humans to use animals for their own needs while striving for a balance “between the benefit gained from the use of animals and the suffering caused to them.”

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Rabbi Shlomo Hecht, Beit Hillel member and former executive director, suggests how kosher consumers might be able to achieve this balance.

“In general, our approach is that there should be no halachic kosher prohibition on meat raised by industrial means. However, from a moral perspective, it is appropriate to reduce consumption in general, and certainly not consume meat produced through practices that are cruel to animals,” he says. Examples of products produced cruelly, he elaborates, are milk-fed veal, foie gras, and meat from calves or lambs shipped alive from abroad. “You need to get used to asking where the meat comes from, just like you ask whether it is kosher,” says Hecht.

EuroMeat News reports that in 2023, some 24,000 tons of beef in the Israeli market originated from domestic dairy farms or pastures. Israel imported 71,000 tons of frozen beef and 29,000 tons of chilled beef (slaughtered mainly in Argentina and Brazil). About 52,000 tons of meat were produced by slaughtering livestock shipped alive from Europe and Australia, reflecting a growth of 135% over a decade, despite strong opposition from animal welfare groups.

The Beit Hillel document urges people “to be as aware as possible of the way animals are treated until the food reaches their table to decide what is appropriate in their opinion and what they object to, and to act to improve the treatment of animals in the food industry.”

For instance, Israeli citizens can advocate for full implementation of a governmental initiative to phase out overcrowded battery cages for egg-laying hens and to eliminate egg-farm cages entirely by 2037 – though progress has been hampered by the war.

Hecht, whose new book Atidin L’Hitchadesh looks at the futuristic intersection of Halacha and technology, points out that tza’ar ba’alei chaim is a primary motivation for developing cultured meat from animal cells. This topic and 15 others related to animal agriculture are covered in Tzimchonut Yehudit (Jewish vegetarianism), a 2023 book by Rabbi Avraham Stav, an educator, social media personality, and researcher at Tzohar, a rabbinic organization offering public services and programs, including kashrut certification for restaurants.

Stav has said that he chooses to limit his meat consumption mainly to Shabbat and holidays, though he clarified that, contrary to the widespread notion that Jewish law mandates eating meat on these occasions, it is not required.

Population growth, industrialism, urbanism, higher incomes, and other worldwide trends “have led to a situation of a completely functional approach” to raising animals for meat, milk, and eggs, characterized by concentrated animal feeding operations colloquially known as factory farms.

VEGAN OPTIONS: What about a plant-based diet? (credit: SHUTTERSTOCK)

Optional vs. obligatory

Indeed, educator, speaker, writer Rabbi Akiva Gersh, aka the Vegan Rabbi, says that a correct contextual understanding of the Talmudic statement “There is no joy except through meat and wine” is critical to understanding the proper place of eating meat in Halacha.

“It’s clear that the Torah permits Jews to eat animals. But to call it an obligation is wrong. The Gemara [Talmud] is very clear when it says that when the Temple stood, the obligation of being happy onyom tov [Jewish holidays] was fulfilled by eating some of the meat of the special sacrifice brought on those holidays.

“Since the Temple has been destroyed, the way that we fulfill the mitzvahof being happy on yom tov is through wine. For almost 2,000 years, eating meat has only been optional,” says Gersh. “If eating meat is optional, and we have a real obligation, a real mitzvah, of avoiding tza’ar ba’alei chaim, and we’re raising these animals – including in Israel in the kosher industry – in an intensely abusive way that goes completely against the laws, the spirit, and the values of Torah, why are we still doing it? How do we justify that?” he asks. “We can’t just close our eyes and say, ‘If a rabbi says it’s kosher, and my rabbi eats it, then I’m allowed to eat it.’ No. People are being willfully ignorant, and that’s not the Jewish way.”

Rabbi Asa Keisar, an Israeli haredi (ultra-Orthodox) advocate for a plant-based diet due to the halachic ramifications of factory farming, writes and lectures on the topic mainly to yeshiva students (his lectures are available with English subtitles on YouTube). Keisar argues that veganism is the Torah’s ideal diet as described inGenesis, and that eating meat and animal byproducts was a concession that is no longer defensible.

Israeli American activist Richard H. Schwartz is president of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians and author of articles and books, such as Vegan Revolution: Saving Our World, Revitalizing Judaism(2020). He describes industrial farming conditions where animals “live in cramped, confined spaces and are often drugged, mutilated, and denied any enjoyment of life before they are transported, slaughtered, and consumed.”

“For example, contrary to several Torah teachings, dairy cows are artificially impregnated annually on what the industry calls ‘rape racks,’ and their calves are taken away immediately after birth, causing severe trauma to both, so that the milk that was meant for the calves can be sold,” writes Schwartz.

Every year at commercial hatcheries around the world, billions of male chicks are asphyxiated or macerated alive because they can’t lay eggs and aren’t suitable for meat. Furthermore, Schwartz writes, “The hens are kept in cages so small that they can’t raise a wing, and all their natural instincts are completely thwarted. This causes the hens to peck at each other in frustration, causing great harm to other hens. Instead of improving conditions for the hens, the industry cruelly cuts off their beaks… without any painkillers.”

Other common practices in livestock farms are horn-cutting and tail-docking, usually done without anesthesia.

Gersh says it’s unimaginable that God would put a stamp of approval on these forms of animal cruelty that didn’t exist in the olden days and that many people aren’t aware of.

“As Jews, we need to be informed. We need to be educated and open to questioning if our past eating habits are still in line with Jewish laws and values in a way that no other Jewish generation has ever had to do,” he says.

If a kosher-certified brand of produce came under suspicion of not checking diligently for bugs, Gersh says, “People would not keep buying it. They’d check to see if it really is in line with Jewish law. Why are we not doing that [in relation to animal products]?” Yet there’s an increased worldwide demand for meat, even in Israel, which is believed to have the highest per capita rate of vegetarians and vegans.

Focus on slaughter

Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the New York-based Orthodox Union Kosher, one of the world’s largest kosher certification agencies, says that while tza’ar ba’alei chaim in the raising of animals for food “is always a generic issue that has to be on the agenda,” the OU and other kashrut certifying agencies do not have expertise or authority in that realm.

Governmental bodies, such as the US Department of Agriculture and the Israeli Agriculture Ministry, set and enforce standards in those facilities, he says. Lately, he’s heard from OU-supervised slaughterhouses that “USDA standards have improved,” particularly in relation to the handling of veal calves.

OU Kosher’s focus, he says, is ensuring that after the animals reach the slaughterhouse, ritual slaughter (shechita) is “the least painful and most humane method” of killing them. Genack notes that the medieval commentator Nachmanides (Ramban) says the reason ritual slaughterers say a blessing before performing shechita “is that it obviates tza’ar ba’alei chaim.”

Last May, OU Kosher international conferences in the United States and Israel considered a range of halachic and logistical challenges in kosher certification. In Jerusalem, attendees included hundreds ofkashrutsupervisors, the two chief rabbis, and leaders of the IDF Rabbinate.

Among many other topics, Genack says, “There was a lot of focus on tza’ar ba’alei chaim at the conference” due to the controversy over governmental guidelines introduced in Canadian slaughterhouses in 2023 that threatened the future of shechita.

He explains that over the past decades, several countries have sought to ban shechita, claiming it is less humane than the industry standard of stunning (shooting a bolt into the animal’s forehead) before killing it by gunshot or electrocution.

Seeking a definitive scientific response to this claim in light of the Canadian challenge, an international team of neuroscientists, physicians, and veterinarians led by New Jersey neurologist and pain specialist Dr. Jacob Hascalovici recently spent two years investigating the facts.

Their paper, to be published in theAmerican Journal of Veterinary Research, demonstrates that when performed properly with optimal restraints and knives, shechita results in loss of consciousness within 10 seconds – perhaps as few as five – and causes less trauma than does the non-kosher industry standard.

Genack notes that he has worked with Prof. Temple Grandin, a prominent global consultant on improving slaughterhouse conditions. “Preventing tza’ar ba’alei chaim,” he says, “has always been a matter of concern and sensitivity for us.”

As for the opening question – whether animals slaughtered according to Jewish law but bred, raised, and transported under conditions of stress and suffering should still be considered kosher – the answer does not seem likely to be addressed anytime soon in the realm of halachic innovation but rather in education, awareness, advocacy, and ethical choices.

As published in the Jerusalem Post

Kosher or cruel? The Jewish ethical dilemma of factory-farmed meat

Growing demand for meat worldwide sparks debate about ‘tza’ar ba’alei chaim’ – causing needless suffering to living creatures.

A principled approach

Ask questions

Optional vs. obligatory

Focus on slaughter

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