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Shechita

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Shechita (shechitah or shehitah) (Hebrew:שחיטה) is the ritual slaughter of mammals and birds according to Jewish dietary laws. The act is performed by drawing a very sharp knife across the animal's throat and allowing the blood to drain out. Islamic dietary laws require a similar procedure.

The animal must be killed with respect and compassion by a "shochet" (ritual slaughterer), a pious Jew who has in mind the life of the animal as he draws the knife across its neck. The animal can be in a number of positions; when the animal is lying on its back, this is referred to as shechita munachat.

If the hindquarters (or sirloin) of kosher mammals are to be eaten by Jews, they must be 'porged' - stripped of veins, fats and sinews in accordance with a strict procedure. Because of the expense of porging and the skill required to properly separate out the forbidden parts, a large portion of the meat of kosher mammals slaughtered through shechita in the United States winds up on the non-kosher market.

Preparation

The animal must be kosher (i.e. animals that chew their cud and have cloven hooves). Before slaughtering, the animal must be healthy, so the animal is inspected as carefully as possible without being invasive. The shochet may feel the area around the lungs, for scabbing or lesions, which would render the animal not kosher. Stunning the animal before slaughter is forbidden.

Process

Though referenced in the Torah, the vast majority of the basic practices of shechita are not described in great detail there. Instead, they are found in Judaism's traditional Oral Torah, and have been codified in halakha in various sources, most notably the Shulchan Aruch. In order to fulfill the basic law of shechita, the majority of the esophagus and trachea of a land animal, or the majority of either of them in the case of birds, must be sliced through with a back and forth sawing motion without violating one of the five major prohibited techniques, or various more detailed rules. The five major forbidden techniques include: Pressing, Pausing, Tearing, Piercing, or Covering. A shochet must have studied these laws and demonstrate a thorough understanding of them, as well as have been carefully trained, before he is allowed to shekht meat unaided.

Pressing is accomplished when the shochet pushes the knife into the animal's throat, chops rather than slices, or positions the animal improperly so that either its head presses down on the blade as it expires or the shochet must push the knife into the throat against the force of gravity. There are those who feel that it is forbidden to have the animal in an upright position during shechita due to the prohibition of pressing. They feel that the animal must be on its back, laying on its side, suspended upside down by a rope or chain, or - as is done in most commercial slaughter houses - placed in a barrel like pen that restrains the animal's limbs while it is turned on its back for slaughter. However, an expert shochet can slaughter the animal while it is upright without pressing the knife. This method is employed in most smaller operations in America.

Pausing is performed by the shochet if he stops the slaughtering process after either the trachea or esophagus has been cut but before they have been cut the majority of the way through. Pausing can happen accidentally if muscle contractions in the animal's neck pull one of these organs out of contact with the blade. The latter case is especially common in turkeys.

Piercing is the result of stabbing the animal in the throat, slicing the trachea or esophagus with a serrated knife, slaughtering with a rusty knife or one that has an imperfection that rises above the blade's surface, burning the animal's throat, or slaughtering with a knife that is so hot it would cause a person to not touch it. Burning is always considered piercing in shechita, regardless of the motion of the knife.

Tearing is caused by using a knife with an imperfection on the blade, such as a scratch or nick, that causes a section of blade to be lower than the surface of the blade.

Covering is accomplished by either cutting into the animal's throat so deeply that the entire width of the knife disappears in the wound, using a knife that is too short so that the end disappears in the wound, or by having a foreign object fall over the knife so the shochet loses sight of the incision.

Minor rules

The animal's blood may not be collected in a bowl, a pit, or a body of water, as these resemble ancient forms of idol worship. If the shochet accidentally slaughters with a knife dedicated to idol worship, he must remove an amount of meat equivalent to the value of the knife and destroy it. If he slaughtered with such a knife on purpose, the animal is forbidden as not kosher. It is forbidden to slaughter an animal in front of others, or to slaughter an animal and its young on the same day, even separately. This is forbidden no matter how far away the animals are from each other. An animal's "young" is defined as either its own offspring, or another animal that follows it around, even if of another species.

The knife

The knife used for shechita is called a hallaf by Ashkenazim or a sacin by Sephardim. By biblical law the knife may be made from anything not attached directly or indirectly to the ground and capable of being sharpened and polished to the necessary level of sharpness and smoothness required for shechita. The Minhag now is to use a metal knife. Anything but a metal knife today would render the animal unfit to eat except in certain narrow circumstances.

The knife must be minimally 1.5 or 2 times as long as the animal's neck is wide, depending on the species of animal and the number of strokes needed to slaughter the animal, but not so long that the weight of the knife exceeds the weight of the animal's head. If the knife is too large, it is assumed to cause Pressing. The knife must not have a point. It is feared a point may slip into the wound during slaughter and cause piercing. The blade may also not be serrated, as serrations cause tearing.

The blade may not have imperfections in it. All blades are assumed by Jewish law to be imperfect, so the knife must be sharpened before each session. The shochet must run his fingernail up and down both sides of the blade and on the cutting edge to determine if he can feel any imperfections. He then uses a number of increasingly fine abrasive stones to sharpen and polish the blade until it is perfectly sharp and smooth. After the slaughter, the shochet must check the knife again in the same way to be certain the first inspection was properly done, and to ensure the blade was not damaged during shechita. If the blade is damaged, the meat may not be eaten by Jews. If the blade falls or is lost before the second check is done, the first inspection is relied on and the meat is permitted.

In previous centuries the hallaf was made of forged steel, which was not reflective and was difficult to make both smooth and sharp. The Baal Shem Tov, fearing that Sabbateans were scratching the knives in a way not detectable by normal people, introduced the Chasidische Hallaf. The Chasidische Hallaf differs from the previously used knife in that it was made from molten steel and polished to a mirror gloss in which scratches could be seen as well as felt. The new knife was controversial and was one of four reasons listed in the Brody Cherem for the excommunication of the Chassidim.

Today the Chasidische Hallaf is the only commercially available knife for shechita and is universally accepted.

Carcass preparation

Bedikah

An animal must be checked again after it has been shekhted to see if there were any internal injuries that would render have the animal unhealthy before the slaughter, but were simply not visible because they were internal. The inspector must check certain organs, such as the lungs, for any scarring which would render the animal treif (not-kosher)

Glatt

In the case of a scab or lesion on a cow’s lungs specifically, there is debate between Ashkenazic customs and Sephardic customs. Ashkenazic Jews hold that if the patch can be removed and the lungs are still airtight (a process that is tested by filling the lungs with air and then submerging them in water and looking for escaping air) then the animal is still Kosher, while Sephardic Jews hold that if there is any sort of scabbing or lesion on the lungs, then the animal is not kosher. “Glatt” meat would literally mean that the animal has passed the stringent Sephardic requirements, although today the word is rarely used in that context.

Removal

After the animal has been thoroughly inspected, there are still steps that have to be taken before the animal can be sold as kosher. The Torah prohibits the eating of certain fats and organs, such as the kidneys and intestines, so they must be removed from the animal. These fats are typically known as “Chelev”. Chelev prohibition only applies to domesticated animals, such as cows and sheep. For wild animals, such as deer, this prohibition is not applicable. There is also a biblical prohibition against eating the sciatic nerve (Gid Hanasheh) so that too, must be removed. The removal of the Chelev and the Gid Hanasheh is considered complicated and tedious, and even more specialized training is necessary to perform the act properly. While the small amounts of Chelev in the front half of the animal are relatively easy to remove, the back half of the animal is far more complicated, and it is where the sciatic nerve is located. In countries such as America, where there exist a large non-kosher meat market, the hindquarters of the animal (where many of these forbidden meats are located) is sold to non-Jews so as to simplify the process. On the other hand, in countries like Israel, specially trained men are hired to prepare the hindquarters for sale as kosher.

Blood

The blood must also be removed from the meat, as there is a biblical prohibition against the eating of blood as well. All large arteries and veins are removed, as well as any bruised meat or coagulated blood. Then the meat has to be purged of all remaining blood (kashering). The process is generally done by letting the meat soak for around 30 minutes, covering it with salt and then allowing it to drain. In Sephardi traditions, one generally leaves the salt on for a full hour and then rinses the meat thoroughly. The meat is then considered kashered. However, if the meat has been left for more than three days after being slaughtered without being kashered, or if the meat was frozen before being kashered, then the blood is considered to have “set” in the meat, and it is no longer salvageable to eat except when prepared through broiling with appropriate drainage.

Animal welfare controversies

The prohibition of stunning and the humane attitude towards the slaughtered animal expressed in shechita law limits the extent to which Jewish slaughterhouses can industrialize their procedures. The most industrialized attempt at a kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors of Postville, Iowa, became the center of controversy in 2004, after People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals released gruesome undercover video of cattle struggling to their feet with their tracheas and esophagi ripped out after shechita. Some of the cattle actually got up and stood for a minute or so after being dumped from the rotating pen.

The Orthodox Union, the leading certificating body for kosher food in the USA, concluded, however, that AgriProcessors was observing proper procedures , though some changes could be made in consideration of marit ayin - community perceptions. The OU pointed out:

While unnecessary cruelty to even one animal is intolerable, one has to look at the total picture before judging the matter. To those unfamiliar with the slaughter industry-kosher or non-kosher-scenes showing post-shechita movement of several animals, such as are shown on the video, can be very disturbing. But it must be realized that during the six or seven weeks during which the video was taken, approximately 18,000 animals were slaughtered by the plant in question. With such numbers, it is inevitable that aberrations do sometimes occur, and those shown in the video represent only a tiny percentage of the total number processed in that time span.

PETA was rebuked by several parties in the Jewish community for mounting what they considered to be a vindictive campaign so soon after Jewish organizations had criticized the group for its "Holocaust on your Plate" ad campaign promoting veganism. Leading rabbis of the non-Orthodox movements in Judaism, allied with a small number of Orthodox rabbis including David Rosen, former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, sided with PETA and condemned what they viewed as the inhumane methods used at AgriProcessors.

Bans on shehitah applied in Europe: some lifted

Obligatory stunning of animals was introduced in the Swiss canton of Aragon (Aragau) in 1850 with a dispensation for shehitah that was rescinded ten years later. A ban was introduced in the Kingdom of Saxony. Later the Swiss ban in Aragon applied to the whole country after a referendum on the question; the Catholic cantons voting against and the Protestant cantons supporting the ban.

Finland banned shehitah while it was part of the Imperial Russian Empire: the ban was lifted when Finland won its independence as a result of the Communist Revolution.

When the Nazis came to power they made the Saxon ban country-wide as they introduced other antisemitic laws, including depriving Jews of their citizenship in 1933. When Germany invaded Poland shehitah was banned there, and in all the countries they subsequently occupied, while Mussolini banned shehitah in Italy. The Allied command removed the bans together with the other anti-Jewish laws when they liberated Europe.

The Swedish government commissioned a report from the Veterinary College in the 1920s that concluded that shehitah could continue but this was later ignored.

A parliamentary committee that met in 1936 reviewed the current legislation in Europe and reported that there were only bans in Switzerland and Saxony at the time of writing: other countries (the UK, France, the Netherlands etc.) all had dispensations for Jewish slaughter.

The committee decided to follow the Swiss legislation that was directed specifically at Jews, without mentioning them by name and the legislation was passed in the house without any debate in 1937. There had been previous debates several times: those in the 1920s had an antisemitc input.

The United Kingdom forbids shechita munachat, on animal welfare grounds, as previously a revolving pen had been used.

The Jewish communiities in Sweden, Norway and Finland are tiny and it would not be economical to shekht there so kosher meat and supplies are frozen. According to Swedish law it is permitted to slaughter fowl for private consumption. Switzerland has land borders with other countries that facilitate import of frozen meat.

Robin Judd in an article Beef and Politics describes what she calls the schächten debates from 1850 that have continued to the present day. With the industrial revolution and the movement of population to towns, slaughter houses were set up on the perimeters of towns where, for the first time, large-scale operatíons were set up.

It was felt that the type of men who necessarily had to be strong in order to handle the animals were brutish, and it was felt necessary for the state to intervene and regulate these matters in the public interest as well as banning women from working in the slaughtering industry.

Non-Jewish Europeans had usually stunned large animals before slaughter, hitting them on the head with a large mallet or with a pole axe.

Steel slaughtering masks were devised to prevent the animal being hit in the eye or the nose, and when ammunition and firearms were introduced in connection with these, it was felt that this method was superior to shehitah and on the basis of Kantian ethics and modern ideas of hygiene as well as the safety of slaughterhouse workers. A public debate arose that, in its early stages, had no anti-Jewish element at all.

In fact, it was found that there were some towns where all the meat was killed by the shehitah method without any Jewish population at all on the grounds that the meat was healthier and the method better.

When the Saxon ban was introduced there was national opposition to it, and there was a massive opposition to the Swiss ban as well.

One reason for introducing the Swiss ban was that there was massive Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe under way at the time, and this was felt to be one way of preventing Jewish immigration into Switzerland by making it difficult for observant Jews to live there.

Antisemitic societies saw their chance to band together with Animal Welfare Societies to campaign for legislation which neither of them alone could have achieved.

There were two agendas - a public one - to improve animal welfare; and an internal one: to prevent Jews from slaughtering livestock.

This aim of preventing shehitah being practised because if offended the sensibilities of the gentile population was pointed out as a valid grounds for introducing anti-shehitah legislation in the Swedish riksdag in a proposal for legislation 1937:188:

"Regardless whatever the case may be concerning the degree of suffering inflicted on the animal, there are other circumstances which support a schächten ban. Thus, we cannot disregard the fact that schächten makes a more disgusting and brutal impression on the observer than does slaughter by stunning. (...) Not only that, we have to take into consideration that, undoubtedly, for large sections of our population, it appears offensive to them that this kind of slaughter is legally permitted. [...]"

While the scientific report from the Veterinary College had been brushed aside, it was on racist grounds - called today "cultural differences" that were appealed to.

In the schächten debates feeling became inflamed and there were strikes of slaughterhouse workers in Germany and in Malmö, in southern Sweden, protesting that shehitah was practised at all. The Malmö strike was also presented as grounds for introducing a ban on shehitah in the Swedish riksdag.

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