This was, doubtless, the original purpose at the time when this code of slaughter was conceived, and its standards probably produced the most humane and hygienic form of killing then available. But today, to kill the animals this way produces something far removed from the original intent of these laws. Orthodox Jewish and Moslem dietary laws forbid consumption of meat from animals which are not "healthy and moving" when killed. Religious orthodoxy today interprets this to mean that kosher meat must come from animals who have not been stunned before being killed. They must be fully conscious when it's done. Further, in order to qualify for the kosher stamp of approval, the animal must have its throat slit in a particular way. The consequences of this interpretation of kosher slaughtering are a travesty for the poor creatures involved.

You see, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 requires, for sanitary reasons, that no slaughtered animal may fall in the blood of a previously slaughtered animal. What this means, in practice, is that animals must be killed while suspended from a conveyer belt, rather than while lying on the floor.

Stringing up an animal before delivering the final blow doesn't cause it any pain if it has already been rendered unconscious. But when an animal must be conscious when killed, as kosher regulations stipulate, and also must have its throat cut in the particular way kosher law requires, the animal is forced to undergo an enormous amount of extra pain:

"Animals being ritually slaughtered in the United States are shackeld around a rear leg, hoisted into the air, and then hang, fully conscious, upside down on the conveyer belt for between two and five minutes-and occasionally much longer if something goes wrong on the killing line before the slaughterer makes his cut. "

It is difficult for us to imagine what these poor animals must suffer. The cows are exhausted and terrified to begin with.

A heavy iron chain is clamped around one of their rear legs, then they are jerked off their feet and hung upside down by a single leg. Now cows are by nature as peaceful a creature as you could ever hope to find, but this situation is too much for even these most mellow of animals. They are provoked into hysteria.

"The animal upside down with ruptured joints and often a broken leg, twists frantically in pain and terror, so that it must be gripped by the neck or have a clamp inserted in its nostrils to enable the slaughterer to kill the animal with a single stroke, as religious law prescribes."

In actual practice, kosher deaths have become a hideous perversion of the original intent of the dietary laws; the procedure adds incalculably to the agony they must suffer.

You may think that today, because relatively few people "eat kosher," only a very small percentage of animals would be "killed kosher". You may also think that even including the non-religious people who seek out kosher meat, mistakenly believing it to be better, this still wouldn't amount to a significant percentage. And finally you are probably quite sure that if you buy meat that isn't labeled kosher, you are certainly not consuming meat from animals killed in this fashion.

But, I'm sorry to say, you'd be wrong on each account. You see, for meat to be passed as kosher by Orthodox Rabbis, it is not enough for the animal merely to have been conscious when killed and to have its throat slit in the required way. A kosher Jew is also forbidden to consume the blood of an animal, so the veins and arteries must be cut out of kosher meat. In many parts of a cow, however, removing the blood vessels is very costly, and so the meat packers have resolved this difficulty by removing the blood vessels only from those parts of the animal from which they can be cut out inexpensively. Thus, even though the whole animal was killed kosher, only these parts are then sold as kosher meat. In other words, there's a lot of meat left over. This means that a great deal of the meat in our supermarkets and restaurants, while not labeled kosher, is in fact from animals hoisted and slaughtered according to kosher regulations. One authority states:

"It has been estimated that over 90% of the animals slaughtered in New Jersey - whose slaughterhouses supply New York City as well as their own state - are slaughtered by the ritual method. "

Another report states:

"Although less than 5% of the flesh in the United States is bought kosher, as much as 50% of the animals are slaughtered as such. "

There is a debate going on now among orthodox Jews as to whether to allow animals killed by more humane methods to be considered as kosher. In Sweden, at least, the Orthodox Rabbis have come to allow animals to be stunned before slaughter. I like to think there is some possibility that the American Rabbis will follow suit. Though kosher procedures take the cake when it comes to cruelty, even under the best of conditions slaughtering is no day at the beach.