13 July 2007
The animal rights group PETA has said America's largest kosher meat company does not treat animals properly before slaughtering them. PETA released a new video showing that AgriProcessors, which produces the ‘Aaron's Best’ line of kosher meats, has not followed through on its pledge to shoot with a gun any cow that appeared to be alive after it had been through the kosher slaughtering process.
AgriProcessors came under fire in 2004 when PETA released a video it had filmed at a slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, showing gruesome footage of cows flailing about after they had had their throats slit in accordance with the practice in kosher ritual slaughter. After the video was released, the AgriProcessors agreed to reform its work practices, but PETA now claims that the company has broken that agreement.
"It is extremely disappointing to find that three years later AgriProcessors still can't slaughter without horrible abuse of the animals involved," Bruce Friedrich, PETA's vice president of international grassroots campaigns, told the weekly magazine ‘Forward’. Attorney Nathan Lewin, who has defended AgriProcessors in the past, said the new video "proves that PETA is out to destroy or make unlawful" kosher slaughter, according to the magazine’s report.
