An animal rights group has produced a videotape which it says shows cattle at a kosher slaughterhouse enduring an "absolutely outrageous" level of cruelty. The organization PETA has posted the video on its website. It shows scenes from the AgriProcessors slaughterhouse in the US state of Iowa. PETA has also filed a complaint with the US department of Agriculture on Monday in which improper slaughtering practices are alleged. However, Chaim Kohn, the plant's supervising rabbi, responded in the "New York Times" that the tapes were "testimony that this is being done right." In kosher slaughter, the animals' throats are sliced with a razor-sharp blade, intended to cause instant and painless death; Jewish law forbids stunning them first. Federal law considers properly conducted religious slaughter as humane and allows Jewish and Muslim slaughterhouses to forgo stunning. But the rules outlaw leaving animals killed that way conscious for an extended period of time.
The PETA Web site describes the videos as showing AgriProcessors workers ignoring "the suffering of cows who are still sensible to pain after having their throats slit by the ritual slaughterer." In it's complaint, PETA said its investigator filmed the slaughter of 278 animals, 25 percent which remained conscious "for a significant period of time." PETA campaigners in Canada recently attracted criticism for comparing the fate of slaughtered animals to that of Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
