Written by PETA
PETA's recent undercover investigation of the largest slaughterhouse in Uruguay exposed that the facility was using the primitive and cruel "shackle and hoist" method for kosher slaughter.
This slaughterhouse is the largest foreign supplier of kosher meat to the U.S. and a major kosher meat exporter to Israel. Thanks to the PETA investigation, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel has just announced that by 2011 it will no longer certify meat as kosher if it's from a slaughterhouse that use "shackle and hoist"—that's about 80 percent of the meat imported into Israel, so we're not talking small potatoes!
This is a great step. Of course, the only way to know for sure that you are not supporting slaughterhouse cruelty is to go vegan. Plant-based foods are naturally kosher, and a vegan diet is in keeping with Jewish laws mandating that animals be treated with compassion and respect.
Written by Heather Moore
I have eaten meat my entire life. Since I was capable of eating solid foods as a small child, I have eaten meat. Today even, I had soup that had chicken in it. While I don't necessarily see anything wrong with just eating meat, this is beyond grotesque. My wife is a vegan, and she directed me to this website. While I don't have any strong moral objection just to eating meat, I cannot be complicit in this behavior. I honestly want to try to eliminate all foods made from animals from my diet. It seems like it will be difficult to achieve, however. I thought that maybe I could start by eliminating all meats except fish, and then after a while just become a vegetarian. Once that becomes comfortable, I could become a vegan. I just think if I jump right into becoming vegan after 25 years of eating meat, I will probably end up "relapsing." But this is despicable. I love animals, and I really feel that our consumerism-driven, instant gratification society is to blame here. People want to sit and consume chicken wings and beer every weekend, and they don't want to realize that there is a dire cost to this behavior. The UN says that 18,000 children die every day due to hunger. So why do we have to gorge ourselves with excess foods that are just giving us heart disease, hypertension, and obesity anyway? I've always eaten meat, but I can't allow myself to fund this type of cruelty. I just can't do it, and that's more important to me than joining the crew for 25 cent wing night down at Hooters.
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