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# Is Kosher Slaughter More Humane?
- URL: https://www.foodconsumer.org/is_kosher_slaughter_more_humane_0728160947/
- Published: 2016-07-28T22:47:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-22T16:28:11.000Z
- Description: Animal expert Temple Grandin's account undercuts the idea that ritual slaughter is gentler: some plants still hoist conscious cattle and veal calves by one hind leg to avoid paying for humane restraints, and animals whose throats are cut unstunned can stay conscious over 60 seconds.
- Author: Food Consumer
- Tags: Politics, #vivvo-import

By Martha Rosenberg

“Kosher” is widely interpreted as meaning pure, and many think kosher slaughter is better or more humane than traditional methods. This week, the New York Times reported about an Orthodox Jewish summer camp in Pennsylvania where boys are taught kosher slaughter on living quails, partridges and ducks. “What we are seeing here today is the opposite of the industrialization of slaughter,” said a teacher—a comment also commonly heard from hunters.

But ritual slaughter is capable of causing great suffering, [says](http://www.grandin.com/references/humane.slaughter.html?ref=foodconsumer.org) noted animal expert Temple Grandin. “Some plants use cruel methods of restraint, such as suspending a conscious animal by a chain wrapped around one hind-limb. In more progressive plants, the animal is placed in a restrainer that holds it in a comfortable, upright position,” she writes.

“Most large cattle slaughter plants are using more comfortable methods of restraint, but there are still some plant managers who have no regard for animal welfare,” continues Grandin about kosher slaughter. “They persist in hanging large cattle and veal calves upside down by one hind-leg. There is no religious justification for use of this cruel method of restraint. The plants that suspend cattle/calves by one hind-leg do so in order to avoid paying the cost of installing a humane restraint device. Humane restraint devices can often pay for themselves by improving employee safety.”

In both kosher (sanctioned by Jewish law) and halal (sanctioned by Islamic law) slaughter, cattle, sheep, goats, and other animals have their throats cut while fully conscious. Because they are not stunned or otherwise rendered insensate, their consciousness can be “prolonged for over 60 seconds,” even though the laws, Grandin notes, were devised to minimize cruelty. Almost half of cattle that are hoisted and shackled bellow loudly, according to one study, and “in some cases, those vocalizations can be heard outside the building,” writes Grandin.

Ritual slaughter is illegal in New Zealand, Switzerland and the Scandinavian and Baltic countries. Former actress and French sex symbol Brigitte Bardot is a strong critic of ritual slaughter and the holiday Eid al-Adha, during which Muslims ritually slaughter sheep and other animals, often in public. “1,000 sheep were slaughtered last month only 300 yards from my house,” she lamented to the *Washington Post*, asking when the French government would enforce its stunning laws.

After a shocking film was shown to Congress in 1957, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act was passed mandating that animals be stunned before they are killed. “We are morally compelled, here in this hour, to try to imagine—to try to feel in our own nerves—the totality of the suffering of 100 million tortured animals,” said Sen. Hubert Humphrey, then a Minnesota Democrat and later vice president under President Lyndon B. Johnson. “The issue before us today is pain, agony and cruelty— and what a moral man must do about it in view of his own conscience.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the act and remarked that “if I depended on my mail, I would think humane slaughter is the only thing anyone is interested in.” In 1978, the year Humphrey died, Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) strengthened the law to make it mandatory for the nation, except for religious slaughter, a loophole that exists today.

In the United States, the sale of kosher meat has escalated through the perception that it is somehow comparable to organic meat. And, even though some Jews and Muslims might be bitter enemies, meat is one thing they agree on: Muslims “often substitute kosher foods when their own ritually produced and certified halal foods are not available,” reported the *Sioux City Journal*.

In 2004, the animal rights group PETA released undercover video from the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors, in Postville, Iowa showing cows very much alive after being “slaughtered.” The undercover activists who shot the video were identified as Hannah and Phillip Schein, a married couple who keep kosher themselves.

When the grisly video surfaced, a coalition of rabbis and kosher certifying agencies in the United States was quick to spin images. “After the animal has been rendered insensible, it is entirely possible that it may still display certain reflexive actions, including those shown in images portrayed in the video,” they wrote. Many who saw the video remained unconvinced.

Nor is everyone convinced that *any* slaughter whether industrial, kosher, halal or hunting is necessary--as a growing number of people go meat-free.