I got back from Texas two days ago fully reminded of what I consider the biggest flaw with the laws of Kashrut (the kosher laws in Judaism). Jewish dietary law concerns itself to a very large extend with restrictions about what meat can be consumed and how it should be killed / prepared. The intent of many of these laws is to keep sacred the life and death of an animal. The process of killing an animal must be careful and under strict supervision to assure that the animal's death is according to ritual.
I wholly agree with the principle that an animal's life is sacred and that if it must be killed for food and clothing, then its death should be sacred as well. So in that way I agree with the laws of Kashrut. However two contractions in the kosher laws have become apparent to me recently: The horrible treatment of animals and humans by the Rubashnik's; and the fact that hunting is not kosher.
To first address the question of hunting, I must include some person experience. I have visited my girlfriend's family in Texas twice and both times I have had extensive discussions about hunting with her father, an avid hunter. He has not (save at family occasions) eaten bought food for the last thirty years (basically since returning from his air-force service overseas). He grew up in North Dakota hunting for food and has been doing it ever since. Every year he kills about two or three deer, as well as a few scores of birds, and an occasional wild hog. This constitutes all of the meat he eats. He is an excellent shot, and on the rare occasion that his bullet does not immediately kill the target animal, he tirelessly hunts down the dieing animal and finishes it off. An animal which has been wounded like that has meat which is rendered rather distasteful by stress hormones, yet he will still butcher and eat that animal because it is not fair to waste its meat.
I have a great deal of respect for this try of subsistence hunting. An animal which he kills lives its entire life free, roaming the hills near his ranch. Then, when fully grown, it is killed in a swift manner, and immediately butchered (see photo).
The meat is free from antibiotics and very low in fat. In fact, animals in the wild tend not to have any fat within the muscles (they have it between and around muscles) as opposed to farmed animals. On my most recent visit I was offered the opportunity to consume some of the hunted deer, as well as to go hunting. I declined both offers, though reluctantly, because of issues of Kashrut.
The argument often made in Judaism against hunting is that because the death of an animal is sacred, one should not take sport in killing it, such as with hunting. Furthermore, it is emphasized that the only hunters in the bible are characters such as Esau and Nimrod, both rather unsavory. From a technical stand point kosher hunting is impossible simply because you must kill an animal in a very particular manner (slit its throat), which can not be done with a wild animal such as a deer.
I can accept the historic prohibition against hunting, since I imagine that methods of hunting used to be much more brutal thousands of years ago. I do not imagine, though, that many people engaged in sport hunting at the time of Moses. In fact, aside from food and clothing, animals were widely used for sacrifice. So perhaps, like many other laws in Judaism, the laws about animal slaughter were to make sure that methods of killing were distinct from those of non-Jewish sacrifice.
Times change and guns get better. I have fired very few guns, but with the help of an excellently calibrated rifle and a high powered scope, I was able to hit the bulls-eye on a target 50 yards away a number of times.
Therefore, if I want to sanctify the life and death of an animal, how better to do that than to hunt it? Of course you must take great care in being extremely prepared in killing and butchering the animal (if you rupture the stomach of a deer while eviscerating it, the HCl in the stomach renders much of the meat unpalatable), plus you must make complete use of its meat and hide.
Its true that allowing Jews to hunt would not create the artificial separation between Jews and non-Jewish ways, and would do away with some of the ritual aspects to kosher killing. However, my second topic really makes you wonder if that is such a bad thing. About a year ago news broke about certain practices going on at the Pottsville Iowa factories of Aaron Rubashnik's eponymous line of meat produces. More has come out since then and as things stand, the major practices which have been exposed are: Inhumane (and in some cases unkosher) treatment of animals; illegal and abusive worker practices; and an overall high level of complacency by Jewish authorities in the Rubashnik practices.
To see some of the kosher practices just go to youtube.com and search for "agriprocessor slaughterhouse". Watching a few of the videos really makes you wonder whether there is anything at all to the claim that kosher killing, in practice, is about sanctifying the animal's life and death. These animals live in feedlots, are fed corn rather than grass (as they evolved to eat) and become grossly overweight to the point that they have difficulty moving freely. When it comes time for their slaughtering, they are brutally flipped upside down by a machine and then their throat is cut. The machine then lets their body roll out onto the ground into pools of blood from that animal as well as other previously slaughtered animals.
Many of the workers at the Agripro slaughterhouse were mistreated plus many workers were illegally working in the US and others were to young to legally work at a slaughterhouse. Lastly, all of the religious authorities responsible for oversight of this plant were blind to the practices which were going on within.
I will not get into the ethical issues which this case brings up (my uncle spoke about this a week ago to the Society for Jewish Ethics), however I really can not see any legitimacy left in the actual practical application of the Jew laws of Kashrut with respect to killing animals. How can you claim to sanctify an animal's life and death if you deprive it of its freedom, its natural nourishment, and then you kill it in an manner which anything less than the most humane method? Moreover, how can you trust an establishment to certify your meat as kosher, if is was so ready and willing to turn a blind eye to practices occurring at the Agripro plant?
It seems like hunting, and if that is not possible, free range slaughtering, is the only real way to observe the spirit of Kashrut. It is true that meat killed in this manner would be harder to come by and more expensive. However if you really want to sanctify an animal's life and death, you should probably just let it occur naturally --- that is, don't eat meat.
As I've been considering these ideas I have progressively cutback on my consumption of meat and poultry. I eat red meat about once every three months, and chicken or turkey maybe once every week or two. I am not ready to give up animal flesh entirely. Still, I would much prefer to be eating hunted meat on those occasions that I do consume it. I would know that the animal had a better life and death than the kosher steak I could otherwise buy.
