Holocaust on our plates?

Editorial

A plan by the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has met with anger from Jewish critics. PETA, always known for their controversial campaigns, which include naked protests against fur, have taken public discourse to a new low by comparing the meat industry with the Holocaust.

The group initiated a vegetarianism campaign and travelling exhibition called Holocaust on your Plate, which is aimed at boycotting meat from factory farms. The mechanized breeding, feeding and killing of farm animals is compared, in graphic campaign photos, to the way Hitler's regime treated Jews and others during the Holocaust.

PETA and some other animal rights groups have taken the position that the life of an animal is equal to or nearly equal to the life of a human being. This campaign is an illogical extension of that idea – that we should be appalled by the way food animals are treated, just as we were appalled by the way humans were treated under the Nazis.

Well, we should be concerned with the manner in which food animals are treated. There is an enormous amount of suffering inflicted on animals for the sole purpose of reducing expenses and increasing profits. Factory farm animals are raised in small spaces to save money. They are often fed by machines that dispense pre-apportioned food. Worse, the manner in which the animals meet their death is often cruel and not always effective. There is great reason for concern over the treatment of animals that are "produced" for human consumption.

In fact, the Jewish community has been at the fore in pressuring for proper treatment of food animals. The very essence of kashrut – the laws governing the slaughter and preparation of animals for food – is explicit in minimizing trauma and pain. Kashrut is founded on the moral position that animals are creatures of God and that the human desire for meat must be balanced with the ethical treatment of animals.

For many Jews, this "balance" is morally incongruous and some have concluded that the only way to be "moral" on this issue is to abstain from eating meat altogether. If the letter of the law of kashrut is to be kind to animals, say Jewish vegetarians, the spirit of the law is vegetarianism.

On the other hand, some non-Jews seek out kosher meat, not because of any matter of taste and certainly not because of price advantage, but because of the promise inherent in a hechsher that the meat was prepared with the least suffering to the animal.

In short, Judaism has always emphasized the ethical treatment of animals. So why do animal activists betray this tradition by singling out the historical experience of the Jewish people as a comparison with the treatment of animals?
Adding insult to injury is the decision by a noted Jewish vegetarian to take on the responsibility of "negotiating" with PETA on behalf of a Jewish community that has been deeply offended by the campaign.

Richard H. Schwartz, the author of Judaism and Vegetarianism and Judaism and Global Survival, has urged the Jewish community to condemn the PETA campaign, while at the same time agreeing with its message – as some sort of quid pro quo for shutting down the campaign "in exchange for the Jewish community putting Jewish values on proper treatment of animals on the Jewish agenda."

In a bizarre news release, Schwartz urges "the Jewish community to take advantage of PETA's conditional offer to close down its Holocaust exhibit, by setting up talks and programs about Jewish teachings on abuse of farm animals." He asks Jewish groups who get involved in these issues to contact him so he can "pass the information on to PETA," adding that "this should not be considered as a favor to PETA or a concession to their insensitive project...."

What Schwartz's intervention does is take the offensive comparison of Jews to farm animals and adds to it the assumption that Jews don't already care about animals.

Here's news to the self-appointed negotiator: the "Jewish agenda" has always had the "proper treatment of animals" at or near the top. Rabbis were struggling over the treatment of animals centuries before the new vegetarian activists were born.

Jews, who have a thoughtful tradition of respecting the dignity of animals, are natural allies for people who seek just treatment for farm animals. It is true that Jewish law, under most interpretations, permits the killing of animals for food, but it does so with strict caveats on how that slaughter is to be done.

The proper treatment of animals is on the "Jewish agenda." So is the ethical treatment of human beings. The Holocaust on your Plate exhibition should be condemned for its cruelty to humans. And PETA should try not to alienate its natural allies.

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