Dark Meat
By SHMUEL HERZFELD**
Op-Ed Contributor
The New York Times
August 5, 2008
One of the customary practices in these nine days is the
avoidance of meat: it’s the way we commemorate the destruction of the
Refraining from food is symbolic, of course. The idea is not
just to avoid meat but to limit ourselves so that we can better focus on the
spiritual.
Unfortunately, this year kosher meat has become a different
type of symbol, one not of mourning and spiritual devotion but of ridicule,
embarrassment and hypocrisy. In May in
What began as an immigration sting, however, quickly took on
larger dimensions. News reports and government documents have described abusive
practices at Agriprocessors against workers,
including minors. Children as young as 13 were said to be wielding knives on
the killing floor; some teenagers were working 17-hour shifts, six days a week.
This poses a grave problem and calls into question whether
the food processed in the plant qualifies as kosher.
You see, there is precedent for declaring something nonkosher on the basis of how employees are treated. Yisroel Salanter, the great
19th-century rabbi, is famously believed to have refused to certify a matzo
factory as kosher on the grounds that the workers were being treated unfairly.
In addition to the hypocrisy of calling something kosher when it is being sold
and produced in an unethical manner, we have to take into account disturbing
information about the plant that has come to light.
The affidavit filed in the United States District Court of
Northern Iowa, for instance, alleges that an employee was physically abused by
a rabbi on the floor of the plant. If true, this calls into question the
reliability and judgment of the rabbi in charge of making sure the food was
kosher.
What’s more, two workers who oversaw the poultry and beef
division were recently arrested for helping illegal immigrants falsify
documents. If they were willing to break national immigration laws, one could
reasonably ask whether they would be likely to show the same lack of concern
for Jewish dietary laws.
Unfortunately, the responses of the leading Orthodox organizations,
the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, have, in my opinion,
fallen far short of what is needed to be done and have done little to diminish
the extent of the desecration of God’s name. I am a member of both groups, but
I am dissatisfied with their stance, which asks us to sit back patiently and
wait for the results of a federal investigation. On some level, this might be
prudent, but on another it is unacceptable.
What is needed is for the Orthodox Union to appoint an
independent commission whose members have not in the past been paid by either
the Orthodox Union or Agriprocessors. Such a
commission would select a team of rabbinic experts to spend an extended period
of time at the plant and then make suggestions and recommendations. This
independent team would make sure the plant upholds basic standards of kashrut and worker and animal treatment — and that it is in
full compliance with the laws of the
Hebrew National used to run a commercial that said: “We
answer to a Higher Authority.” Well, we do. We need to express shame and
embarrassment about the reports coming out of
**Shmuel Herzfeld, rabbi of Ohev Sholom-The National
Synagogue, is a member of the Rabbinical Council of America.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 6,
2008, on page A23 of the
nytimes.com