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Thousands of Chickens Die of Hypothermia During Kaporos in Brooklyn

October 9, 2022 by Leave a Comment


The News

Thousands of chickens stacked in crates on the streets of Brooklyn died of hypothermia over the course of two days during Kaporos, a ritual animal slaughter that takes place each year in the days leading up to Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. After being delivered to Hasidic neighborhoods in Williamsburg, Borough Park, Crown Heights and Midwood, hundreds of crates filled with chickens were left outside in the rain, soaking tens of thousands of chickens who were being stored without shelter on public streets. 

According to Michael Dolling, who rescues and rehabilitates farm animals, young chickens have difficulty regulating their body temperature. When they are exposed to cold temperatures, wind and rain, they quickly become hypothermic. Upon seeing the wet and shivering animals at several Kaporos sites in Williamsburg, Dolling said that thousands of chickens at those sites alone would be dead within hours. In fact, many of the chickens were already dead — before even being used in the ritual. “In past years, when Kaporos took place in September, thousands of chickens slowly roasted in the crates. This year, they froze to death.”  

Over the course of six days, advocates rescued and saved the lives of 238 chickens who would have otherwise died of exposure or been killed during the Kaporos ritual.  The rescuers used car heaters, towels and blankets to warm the shivering birds while rushing them to a triage center for first aid. There, they used heat lamps, heat plates, hair dryers and warm water bottles to raise their body temperature while administering subcutaneous fluids and medicines to stabilize them.

Photo of some of the chickens rescued during Kaporos in 2022

During Kaporos in 2022, animal rights activists in Brooklyn rescued and saved the lives of 238 chickens who would otherwise have died of hypothermia or been slaughtered.

During Kaporos, ultra-Orthodox, or Hasidic, Jews twirl a live chicken around their head while reciting a prayer asking for forgiveness for their sins. After the ritual, the chickens are killed in one of dozens of makeshift slaughterhouses erected on public streets without permits in violation of 15 city and state health and animal cruelty laws.

Photo of chicken feces on public streets during Kaporos

During Kaporos, a ritual slaughter of chickens before Yom Kippur, residential streets in several Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn are contaminated with chicken feces in violation of multiple city and state health codes.

Instead of shutting down the slaughterhouses and issuing fines, the NYPD provides the Kaporos vendors with barricades, floodlights and a police presence to help facilitate the ritual killing. At some of the Kaporos sites, the NYPD closes down entire public streets. Despite the health code and animal cruelty violations and the lack of permits, the city government subsidizes Kaporos because the Hasidic communities in Brooklyn are a powerful voting bloc. 

Photos of chickens killed during Kaporos in Brooklyn, NY

In 2018, animal rights activists brought dead Kaporos chickens left on the streets of Brooklyn into the NYC Department of Health.

For many years, animal rights activists with the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos protested Kaporos, calling on practitioners to perform the ritual using coins, a commonly used alternative to chickens. Over time, however, the protests, which did not appear to be effecting change, morphed into “chicken care vigils” during which activists provide food and water to the chickens in the crates.

@theirturn

Look how hungry they are. See 5th link in bio. #kaporos #yomkippur #animalcruelty #hasidimofbrooklyn #animalsacrifice @nychealthy

♬ original sound – Donny Moss

In 2017 and 2018, animal rights activists in New York City ran a campaign to compel the Health Commissioner at the time, Dr. Mary Bassett, to enforce the health codes violated during Kaporos. In a meeting with Dr. Bassett and other Health Department officials, the advocates presented her with a toxicology report which concluded that  Kaporos poses a “significant public health hazard” based on fecal and blood samples taken from the streets. Indeed, several advocates who have rescued abandoned and sick chickens have contracted e. Coli and campylobacter. Dr. Bassett refused to curb Kaporos, telling the advocates that “no disease signals” had been associated with the practice.

After being subjected to ten months of increasingly provocative protests during her public appearances, Dr. Bassett resigned from her position as Health Commissioner with over three years left in her term and moved to Boston. In anticipation of a protest during a talk that she was giving at the Boston University School of Public Health, Dr. Bassett attempted to defend her inaction on the grounds that her boss at the time, Mayor Bill de Blasio, would not allow it:  “Those of us who work in government face the reality of the fact that the people who appoint us have to go back to the public and back to the ballot box to be reappointed, so there’s always going to be a need for advocacy from people outside of government. For someone who is passionately committed to many issues embraced by advocates, it can be difficult to acknowledge the role that I play as a political appointee. I can’t always be at the barricades.”

Photo of chicken body parts on the sidewalk

Animal rights activists say that, as NYS Health Commissioner, Dr. Mary Bassett has an obligation to enforce the health codes and protect the public from another zoonotic disease outbreak

After spending three years in Boston, Dr. Bassett returned to New York in 2021, when Governor Kathy Hochul appointed her State Health Commissioner, a position that gives her more power than before to shut down Kaporos. Activists hoped that the COVID pandemic, which is believed to have originated in a live animal market, would compel Dr. Bassett to curb the practice, as tens of thousands of people without PPE physically handle live animals, many of whom are visibly sick and show signs of respiratory distress.

Photos of toxicology report outlining the risks Kaporos poses to the public health

Mayor de Blasio’s Health Commissioners have refused to address a toxicology report that outlines the public health risks posed by the slaughter of over 100,000 chickens on public streets during Kaporos.

In 2015, an advocacy group called the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos and 19 NYC residents who live in neighborhoods that are contaminated by the mass slaughter sued the City of New York, the NYC Department of Health and the NYPD for failing to enforce the 15 public health, sanitation and anti-cruelty laws and regulations that are violated during Kaporos. Nora Constance Marino, the attorney for the plaintiffs, called on the court to issue a “Writ of Mandamus,” which would compel city agencies to enforce the laws. After two lower courts ruled against the plaintiffs, Marino argued her case in front of the Court of Appeals, which ruled that city agencies have discretion over which laws to enforce.

Activists estimate that at least 100,000 chickens are slaughtered in the streets of Brooklyn each year during Kaporos.


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Will Dr. Fauci Call for Closure of U.S. Wet Markets?

April 7, 2020 by Leave a Comment


The News

During an interview on Fox News on April 4,  Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said that wet markets in “certain countries” should be shut down. While he did not specify the countries, he was referring to China, which is where COVID-19 is believed to have jumped from animal to human, and to other Asian countries that have similar wet markets that sell and slaughter live animals. Dr. Fauci made no mention of wet markets in the United States:

“I think they should shut down those things right away. It boggles my mind how, when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human/animal interface ,that we don’t just shut it down. There are certain countries in which this is very commonplace. I would like to see the rest of the world really lean with a lot of pressure on those countries that have that because what we’re going through right now is a direct result of that.”

A wet market in NYC where customers, including children and the elderly, handle live animals

“Why would Dr. Fauci call on world leaders to pressure countries in Asia to shut down their wet markets without calling for the closure of live animal markets in his own country?” said Jill Carnegie, co-organizer of Slaughter Free NYC, an advocacy group working to shut down NYC’s 80+ wet markets and slaughterhouses. “Do we need to wait for an outbreak of a novel strain of bird flu or swine flu before shutting down these breeding grounds of infectious disease?”

Wet markets in NYC sell at least 10 species of live animals and slaughter them on site for their customers.

Following Dr. Fauci’s remarks, several mainstream media news outlets, including CNN, ran substantive stories in which they aired footage of Asian wet markets, but they did not not address the widespread prevalence of wet markets in the United States. Through videos, letters, petitions and social media, animal advocacy groups are working to inform both the mainstream media and Dr. Fauci of the presence of wet markets in the United States, including three in Bensonhurst, the Brooklyn neighborhood where he was raised.

On April 7th, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a nonprofit health organization of 12,000 physicians, sent a letter to the U.S. Surgeon General urging him to shut down live markets in the United States:

“There must not be another pandemic. To ‘prevent the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases’ in the United States, the Surgeon General must promulgate regulations that prohibit the sale, transfer, donation, other commercial or public offering, or transportation, in interstate or intrastate commerce, of live birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians to retail facilities that hold live animals intended for human consumption.”

Dr. Neal Barnard, PCRM’s President, announced the news on a live webcast with TV journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is also calling for the closure of wet markets. In a letter to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, PETA President Ingrid Newkirk wrote, “On behalf of PETA and our more than 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide, we respectfully ask that you call for the immediate and permanent closure of these markets, in which dangerous viruses and other pathogens flourish.

In several American cities, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, animal advocacy groups have been, through lobbying, litigation and protest, sounding alarm bells about the wet markets for the past several years — long before the COVID-19 outbreak. In New York City, a lawsuit filed by neighbors of one annual wet market reached New York State’s highest court. The lawyer for the plaintiffs argued that the Court should mandate that the NYPD and Dept. of Health enforce the 15 City and State laws that are violated by this wet market. The Court of Appeals judges ruled that municipalities have discretion over which of its own laws to enforce.

While the wet markets in the United States do not sell bats and pangolins, the animals believed to have transmitted COVID-19 to humans, they do intensively confine thousands of animals, some of whom are visibly ill, in pens and cages where customers shop. In one Brooklyn wet market, where animals are used in an annual religious sacrifice, customers handle the animals themselves — purchasing live chickens and swinging them around their heads before bringing them to a ritual slaughterer. According to a toxicologist who conducted an investigation on behalf of area residents, the wet market activities “pose a significant public health hazard.”

Dozens of public health and animal rights advocates occupy the New York City Dept. of Health to demand that the Deputy Commissioner of Disease Control, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, shut down a wet market that violates seven City health codes


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Inside NYC’s Wet Markets – A “Ticking Time Bomb”

March 30, 2020 by Leave a Comment


The News

New York City has over 80 wet markets – businesses that sell live animals to the public and slaughter them onsite.  New York’s live animal markets are located in all five boroughs.

Since 2016, public health and animal rights advocates have been sounding alarm bells about the City’s wet markets, pleading with health officials and lawmakers to shut them down in order to prevent the transmission and spread of infectious disease. COVID-19 is believed to have been transmitted from animal to human in a wet market in Wuhan, China.

Sheep and chickens are among the approximately 10 different species of live animals sold at NYC’s wet markets

NYC’s wet markets sell approximately ten animal species, including goats, sheep, chickens, guinea hens, rabbits, pigeons, Muscovy ducks, and quail.  The animals are confined in small cages or pens where they can sicken each other and the people who work and shop there. Animal feces, body parts, feathers and blood are tracked in and out by customers and pedestrians who then carry the refuse on to the subways and into their homes, offices and communities.

Wet markets, or live animal markets, are storefront slaughterhouses that sell live animals to public and slaughter them on site

“New York City’s wet markets are a ticking time bomb,” said Jill Carnegie, a co-organizer with Slaughter Free NYC, an organization advocating to shut down wet markets and other slaughterhouses in NYC. “If avian flu or another infectious disease is transmitted to just one human, it could spread very rapidly in New York City and beyond, as we have seen with COVID-19.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the advocates’ sense of urgency. Slaughter Free NYC is now asking Mayor Bill de Blasio, Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot and Deputy Commissioner of Disease Control Dr. Demetre Daskalakis to prohibit the slaughter of live animals in the five boroughs of New York. In February, the organization launched a petition with its demand.

In a letter to NY Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NY State Department of Agriculture & Markets, Bonnie S. Klapper, a New York City-based attorney working on several cases involving animal agriculture, wrote that City and State health authorities are turning a blind eye to the well-documented health code violations

Click letter to view in full

The NYC Department of Health claims that it has no regulatory authority over these markets and defers to NY State Department of Agriculture & Markets, but state health officials have told me that these wet markets are never inspected unless they receive numerous complaints,” Klapper told TheirTurn. “That said, no amount of oversight can prevent disease transmission in storefront slaughterhouses where sick animals are coming into contact with humans.”

PCRM Petition to the Surgeon General to outlaw live markets in the United State

On March 25th, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sent a letter to the Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) encouraging him to call for the permanent closure of [wet] markets:  “Deadly outbreaks of mad cow disease, avian flu, swine flu, SARS, HIV, hoof-and-mouth disease and others have stemmed from capturing or farming animals for food. Live animal markets are perfect breeding grounds for diseases, which can jump from various others species to humans . . . If we’re to prevent future pandemics, we must heed the warning of top coronavirus researchers like Dr. Danielle Anderson, scientific director of the Duke-NUS Medical School, and cut them off at the source.”

In partnership with The Save Movement, an organization that stages vigils at slaughterhouses around the word, Slaughter Free NYC conducts vigils and educational outreach at New York City’s wet markets.


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Amid COVID-19 Outbreak, Activists Rally at City Hall to Shut Down the 85 Live Animal Markets and Slaughterhouses in NYC

March 18, 2020 by Leave a Comment


The News

As New York City began to shut down due to the spread of COVID-19, approximately twenty public health and animal rights activists staged a rally at City Hall to demand that city and state health authorities shut down the 85 live animal markets and slaughterhouses in NYC. COVID-19, also known as the corona virus, is believed to have jumped to humans from animals being sold in a live animal market in Wuhan, China.

“Live markets, which are storefront slaughterhouses open to the public, are a petri dish of infectious diseases that jeopardize the health of all New Yorkers,” said Jill Carnegie, an organizer with Slaughter Free NYC.

Amid COVID-19 outbreak, public health and animal rights activists are asking New York City and State health officials, including NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot and Assistant Commission Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, to shut down the 85 live animal markets and slaughterhouses in NYC

After the corona virus outbreak was traced back to a “wet market” in Wuhan which sold wild and domesticated animals for meat, the Chinese government is reported to have shuttered live animal markets across the country.

“The pandemic didn’t happen to us; we brought it upon ourselves because we didn’t learn our lesson from bird flu, swine flu, mad cow, SARS and the many other infectious diseases that jumped to humans from the animals who we eat,” said Maureen Medina, an organizer with Slaughter Free NYC. “Mother Nature has sent us so many warnings, and we’ve put bandaids on all of them instead of taking the most obvious measure to prevent them, which is to switch to a plant-base diet.”

An estimated 85 live animal markets in NYC sell cows, chickens, goats, sheep, guinea pigs, rabbits and others animals who they slaughter on site

Slaughter Free NYC and The Save Movement have been staging vigils and conducting educational outreach at live markets in NYC. Organizers hope that the COVID-19 pandemic will be a wake-up call for elected officials and for the New York City Department of Health and NY State Ag & Markets who have, until now, ignored their pleas to shutter the city’s live markets.  Slaughter Free NYC has launched a petition.

Slaughter Free NYC Petition to Shut Down Live Animal Markets and Slaughterhouses in heavily populated five boroughs of New York


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Over 500 Animal Rights Activists Participate in Slaughterhouse Vigil; Nine Animals Saved

July 6, 2018 by Leave a Comment


The News

During the 2018 Animal Liberation Conference in Berkeley, California, over 500 animal rights activists traveled to the city of Stockton to bear witness at a chicken slaughterhouse. During the four hour vigil, which was organized by The Save Movement and Direct Action Everywhere, slaughterhouse workers brought the activists five chickens as a peace offering. A total of nine animals were saved during the course of the day.

The Save Movement is a worldwide network of Save groups bearing witness to farmed animals and promoting veganism and love-based, grassroots activism.  Two local chapters of the Save Movement, Bay Area Animal Save and Stockton Animal Save, stage monthly vigils at the Stockton Poultry Market.

Over 500 activists bear witness at a slaughterhouse in Stockton, California (photos: Bay Area Animal Save)

The Save Movement aims to set up vigils at every slaughterhouse and now has over 415 groups in 50 countries worldwide.

Activists participate in slaughterhouse vigil during 2018 Animal Liberation Conference. (Bay Area Animal Save)

 

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