Advocates Rally at City Hall in New York to Demand End to Illegal Live Animal Market
The News
Public health and animal rights advocates in NYC staged a rally at City Hall on November 27th to demand that the NYPD and Department of Health enforce the 15 laws that are broken each year at the live animal markets that are opened during Kaporos, a ritual sacrifice of 60,000 chickens that takes place before Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement.
“Mayor de Blasio instructs his health commissioner to defend the health code violations and his police commissioner to aid and abet in the crimes because he wants to maintain favor with the powerful Orthodox voting bloc that commits them,” said Jessica Hollander, an organizer in the grass roots effort to stop the illegal slaughter. “If any other group were breaking laws, the NYPD would be arresting, not assisting, them.”
Nora Constance Marino, an attorney who has represented The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos in litigation against the City, told demonstrators at the rally that the legal battle will continue, in spite of a setback at the NY State Court of Appeals in which six judges ruled that they did not have the power to compel city agencies to enforce their own laws.
During Kaporos, which takes place over the course of several days, ultra-Orthodox communities truck thousands of crates of chickens into the city and kill them in approximately 30 makeshift slaughterhouses that they erect on public streets without permits.
Practitioners of Kaporos erect approximately 30 makeshift slaughterhouses on public streets without permits. (Unparalleled Suffering Photography)
“If I wanted to host a block party, I would need to need to fill out an application and get approval from multiple city agencies. It’s a rigorous process” said Jill Carnegie, the Campaigns Director with the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos. “Yet Kaporos practitioners can, without a permit, build illegal slaughterhouses and kill tens of thousands of animals on residential streets with the financial and logistical support of the NYPD.”
Advocates argue that the city is aiding and abetting in the crimes by not only dispatching a massive number of police officers but also providing Kaporos practitioners with barricades to cordon off public streets, floodlights and traffic cones in which the chickens are bled out into the streets.
In 2015, residents in the neighborhoods contaminated by the blood and body parts of chickens killed during Kaporos hired a toxicologist to investigate the impact of the waste on their health. In his report, Dr. Michael McCabe concluded that Kaporos “constitutes a dangerous condition and poses a significant public health hazard.” Advocates have, on multiple occasions, sent the toxicology report to Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the head of Infectious Disease Control at the NYC Department of Health, and to Drs. Oxiris Barbot and Mary Bassett, the City’s current and former health commissioners, but they have refused to acknowledge it. Advocates speculate that acknowledging the risks outlined in this “damning” report would put them in a position to have to take action to prevent a potential disease outbreak.
Mayor de Blasio’s Health Commissioners have refused to address a toxicology report that outlines the risk posed by the mass slaughter of 60,000 animals on public streets during Kaporos.
“I got violently sick. I had very bad E. coli for weeks,” said Kurt Andernach, the Director of And-Hof Animal Sanctuary who took in some of the chickens rescued during Kaporos. “When you have high concentrations of sick birds, it’s just a matter of time before something catastrophic happens.”
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“Exposing animal torture and advocating on behalf of the victims are not acts of anti-Semitism, even if those committing the crimes (Kaporos violates 15 city and laws) are Jewish”
Yes you are correct with advocating is not Anti-semetic…..but putting up articles like this saying Orthodox Jews are part of a conspiracy with Government officials sure is Anti-semetic. There are no City or State laws that ban this practice. It’s your opinion.
BTW using coins isn’t mandatory either….it’s called a tradition; because your brand of Judiasm doesn’t teach it doesn’t mean others can’t.
“Exposing animal torture and advocating on behalf of the victims are not acts of anti-Semitism, even if those committing the crimes (Kaporos violates 15 city and laws) are Jewish”
Yes you are correct with that…but putting up articles like this saying Orthodox Jews are part of a conspiracy with Government officials sure is.
BTW using coins isn’t mandatory either….it’s called a tradition; because your brand of Judiasm doesn’t teach it doesn’t mean others can’t.
As you probably already know, many of the public health and animal welfare advocates working to protect the animals from the starvation, thirst, intensive confinement and physical abuse to which they are subjected are Jewish. I am Jewish, and my rabbi taught my congregation to be a voice for the most vulnerable among us. Exposing animal torture and advocating on behalf of the victims are not acts of anti-Semitism, even if those committing the crimes (Kaporos violates 15 city and laws) are Jewish. Jewish scripture does not mandate the use of live animals as Kaporos, which is why so many practitioners swing coins around their heads instead of chickens. God would not want his creatures to be tortured at all, much less in his name.
This is Anti-semetic Propoganda that used to be around in Germany during WW2. There are no laws banning this practice and has nothing to do with a voting Bloc. Shame on the commenters and the fool who runs this website.
Ritual murder, or animal sacrifice, to get yourself absolved of your sins is completely absurd, anachronistic, and out of touch with the whole point of religious belief. Endeavor to live a sin-free life or simply to sin less; but if you can’t, then atone for your own transgression(s), ask for forgiveness, resolving never to commit such acts again. Do not believe you are washing away your sins through murdering animals.
I, like the chickens, do not believe in the animal sacrifice called for in the bible. Stop this killing on the street and do not take it elsewhere. Join the 21st Century.
Thanks for the quotations, ahimsa42.
I witnessed this in person, helping those chickens. It was truly a horrifying experience. NYPD wanted to help, they protected us activists. The birds were starved, in burning hot sun, no water or shade. There were dead and dying birds in the crate. It was horrific.
“In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they’re the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.” ― Isaac Bashevis Singer
“Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.” -Theodor W. Adorno
“We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the devil in human form. ” — William Ralph Inge
“And what a waste of life when there are so many people starving, these poor animals are just thrown away it’s diabolical.”
wait-what? are you suggesting that it would be any better if the helpless victims mutilated corpses were consumed? if so you are really missing the true message of compassion and non-violence for ALL species.
And a majority of Jews who oppose this blood-letting are paying for it as well!!!
But before we get too high and mighty about those “awful Jews”, let’s remember that MILLIONS of turkeys, chickens, geese, pigs are cruelly raised and slaughtered for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners which are indulged in by Christians and people of every faith. That the sacrifice of millions of animals takes place daily in slaughter houses all around this country, just for those burgers, bacon, and chicken nuggets and it is hidden from the public in disease-ridden, hideous sheds and factory farms.
And lest we forget:
BLOOD IN THE STREETS THROUGHOUT THE MOSLEM WORLD!
Eid Al-Adha animal sacrifice festival sees roads turn red with blood as cows are beheaded..
In the Islamic ‘Festival of Sacrifice’ millions of goats, cows, camels and sheep are slaughtered in the streets to honour the ultimate sacrifice Abraham was willing to make in the Koran – murdering his own son. Muslims all over the world are celebrating Eid al-Adhar – ‘Greater Eid’ – the tenth day of the holy month, coinciding with the Hajj pilgrimage from Medina to Mecca. Streets across the world will be adorned in the red of blood today as Muslims celebrate the ‘Festival of Sacrifice’ Eid al-Adha
Gruesome photos depict the ritual bloodshed of animals in the name of a global Islamic tradition that has been branded “cruel and abhorrent”. Beheaded cows and goats leave streams of blood as they are dragged through the streets of countries including Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh and Malaysia to the applause of worshipers observing an annual holy rite of passage. Children stand as spectators to huge beasts making a last and desperate bid for freedom before falling under the bloody blades of butchers.The custom is undertaken to replicate the willingness of the prophet Abraham to murder his son Ishmael (Isaac in Christianity) under Allah’s orders.”
We are ALL guilty, if we are still consuming animals and allowing others to do the killing, for whatever reason!
And what a waste of life when there are so many people starving, these poor animals are just thrown away it’s diabolical.
Those Jews are the most anti-life people on the planet. They are being permitted to engage in a public slaughter of 60,000 chickens on tax payer streets????? And with that amount of suffering and serious potential of disease outbreak to the people who are paying for it???? Mass killing, intentional starvation of the animals, blood letting, and suffering for everyone to see? All for their religion?? And many other people who are not Jewish are paying for it???? Unbelievable!!!