This is kaporos.

“Do you know what the difference between you and me is?” snarled the bearded man to whom I had not said a single word and whose only word to me up to this point had been “faggot”.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I know who my mother and father are.”

You may be wondering what would compel a grown man to direct such a vitriolic comment at a complete stranger on a public sidewalk in New York City. The answer is quite simple: I had had the temerity to be present and to photograph this man as he waved two live chickens above the heads of his female companions (presumably his wife and daughter) during the ritual animal sacrifice known as kaporos.

This was my third year documenting kaporos in Brooklyn, so I’m no stranger to the hostility to outsiders that characterizes so many of the practitioners of this ancient and barbaric ritual. When I have documented kaporos in the past, I have been insulted, yelled at, and threatened, so I wasn’t expecting a warm reception this year. Nevertheless, the level of aggression at this year’s kaporos was palpably higher than in years past.

Of course, I could have left at any point and spared myself the frustration of being berated by (mostly unmasked) strangers; but as there was no possible escape for most of the unfortunate chickens for whom I had come to bear witness, I decided that I had no right to give myself any such easy way out of what was for me, an extremely unpleasant situation, but what for the animals, was a truly horrific one. So, I stayed and documented the event.

This is what I saw. This is kaporos.

A truck full of live chickens arrives at the site where the ritual slaughter will take place, a mostly residential neighborhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Once unloaded, the crates are piled on top of each other on the sidewalk. The job of retrieving the chickens from the crates and handing them to the congregants is entrusted, for the most part, to children. New York State law prohibits persons below the age of 18 to be employed in a slaughterhouse, but in this makeshift slaughter facility on a public sidewalk in New York City, this and other laws and ordinances are conveniently not enforced by the numerous NYPD officers who are present throughout the event. Mayor Bill de Blasio is also fully aware of what goes on at these events and has made no effort to stop them and every effort to accommodate them. The two words he invokes to defend his complicity in this primitive ritual of blood sacrifice are “religious freedom”. If he were speaking truthfully on the matter, however, the two words he would use are “voting bloc”.

Each of these crates contains about ten chickens. As the crates are emptied, new ones are brought in by truck to replenish the supply of victims.

A man waves two live and very distraught chickens above the heads of his female companions as they read a prayer that has been taped to one of numerous metal barricades thoughtfully provided by the New York City Police Department for this event that violates numerous state laws and local ordinances.

No apparent efforts are made to shield children from the unpleasantness and cruelty toward animals involved in kaporos. On the contrary, many of them are conscripted as participants in the antiquated and bloody ritual sacrifice. Most children exhibit a natural aversion to animal abuse, so it’s easy to imagine how upsetting it must be for many of them to witness it firsthand and perpetrated by people they know and trust.

Oh look, you just got a text message! It’s from the Dark Ages. They’d like their violent and obscurantist ritual back.

Notice the lack of feathers on this chicken’s breast and keel. Because these animals spend most of their short lives in filthy, crowded facilities that aren’t properly or frequently cleaned, they are forced to live in and directly on large quantities of excrement. Prolonged and direct exposure to the ammonia from all of that fecal matter literally burns the feathers off of parts of their bodies. Just try to imagine the pain it causes to their exposed skin.

The phrase that the practitioners of kaporos are supposed to say as they wave a chicken above their heads is “This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. This rooster (hen) will go to its [sic] death, while I will enter and proceed to a good long life and to peace.” The doctrine of substitutionary atonement is morally appalling, even when the “substitute” is a willing participant in the transaction. But when the substitute is an innocent, defenseless, and unconsenting victim, it’s even more appalling still. Why should someone who bears no responsibility whatsoever for someone else’s sins be sacrificed as an atonement for them?

These inverted traffic cones are where the chickens’ lives will end. After their throats are hastily slit, they are placed head-down into the cones and left to bleed out. Chickens sometimes manage to escape from the cones, even though they are mortally wounded. But their struggle is in vain. Once they’ve had the knife drawn across their throats, there is no hope of survival.

It’s difficult to imagine how stressful and terrifying this sadistic ritual must be for the tens of thousands of chickens who are abused and slaughtered in kaporos every year.

During a pandemic that has killed over a million people worldwide and over 23,000 in New York City alone, and which was caused by a zoonotic disease, the mayor of New York City, the feckless and almost universally despised Bill de Blasio, permits thousands of live birds to be stacked in crates on public sidewalks in the densely populated borough of Brooklyn. The threat to public health caused by this situation is of little or no apparent concern to Mr. de Blasio.

More crates of doomed birds

Almost without exception, the people who take part in kaporos hold the chickens as this person is doing: with the birds’ fragile wings pinned together behind their backs and held as one would hold a grocery bag. Every indication is that this is incredibly painful for the birds, especially when it happens, as it does often in kaporos, for prolonged periods.

This is a recording of chickens crying as they are lifted from crates by their sensitive wings.

I think this guy has a crush on me. He kept following me around and asking me questions as he filmed me with his phone. And for some reason, he kept yelling that I hate Jews, which was a lie. I don’t hate Jews. I hate animal abuse. He also made the slanderous and utterly false assertion that I stole a chicken. None of this is surprising. Anyone who thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to abuse animals isn’t likely to have many scruples when it comes to defamation of character. Anyway, if you know this guy, please tell him that I’m flattered by all of his attention, but I’m just not interested. I don’t date non-vegans.

No one deserves to be treated like this. If you were in her position, wouldn’t you want someone fighting for you?

This photo is my tribute to the political legacy of Mayor Bill de Blasio. I call it “CHICKENSHIT”.

Some people think animal abuse is funny. It isn’t. Don’t be one of those people.

For some of the chickens slaughtered in this horrific ritual, there was at least some reprieve. In an effort organized by Slaughter-Free NYC, a group of animal rights activists came to the site of the kaporos ritual and gave water and fruit to as many of the birds as they could. Of course, this did not spare the birds the fate that awaited them, but it provided some solace and meant that these sensitive creatures wouldn’t die without having experienced some measure of human kindness.

An animal rights activist uses her phone to capture the plight of chickens destined for slaughter in kaporos.

What You Can Do

• If you live in New York City and you’re concerned by what you’ve seen in this blogpost, call 311 and let the city officials know that you find ritual animal sacrifice on public property unacceptable. When you call 311, you will be asked when and where the incident you’re reporting happened. All of the photos above were taken on Saturday, September 26th, 2020 on Eastern Parkway Boulevard and Kingston Avenue in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.

• If you know anyone who practices kaporos with a live chicken, please suggest the much more popular and humane alternative of using cash instead.

• Learn more about the effort to end the use of chickens in kaporos by visiting endchickensaskaporos.com and United Poultry Concerns.

• Support the work of Slaughter-Free NYC. These people work tirelessly to educate the public about the horrors of kaporos and other forms of animal abuse and slaughter in New York City.

• Don’t eat chickens. Chickens are the most exploited land animals on the planet. In the United States alone, 9 billion of them are killed for food every year, which is an average of 28 chickens for every man, woman, and child in the country, every single year. By not eating them, you remove the incentive for the producers of chicken-based products to keep breeding more of them into existence for the sole purpose of slaughter.

• Visit a sanctuary! Every year, animal liberation activists manage to rescue hundreds of chickens from kaporos sites around the world. Many of these birds wind up at amazing sanctuaries, where they receive top-notch veterinary care and lots and lots of TLC. At sanctuaries such as Tamerlaine Animal Sanctuary and Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, you can meet and get to know chickens who have been rescued from kaporos rituals and are now living happy, healthy lives with other chickens and their human guardians.

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All text and images Copyright 2020, Vegan Future Now

A Visit to Tamerlaine Farm Animal Sanctuary

Situated in a lush stand of trees in Montague Township, New Jersey, about two hours from Manhattan, is Tamerlaine Farm Animal Sanctuary, home to nearly two-hundred chickens, turkeys, goats, ducks, pigs, and other nonhuman animals rescued from a variety of exploitative industries, but mostly from those that supply meat and eggs to American consumers. In stark contrast to the squalor, abuse, and confinement from which many of them were rescued, at Tamerlaine, these animals enjoy the freedom to move about, socialize, play, and express their individuality. But Tamerlaine isn't just a sanctuary for animals: it's also a haven for people who love them, as I found out on a recent trip to Tamerlaine, organized by the good folks at Animal Connection. 

Last Sunday morning, I boarded a bus in Midtown Manhattan and, along with about seventy other animal-loving New Yorkers, made the trip to Montague Township to visit Tamerlaine; enjoy the company of its resident goats, chickens, turkeys, and pigs; and, eat as many vegan empanadas as I could without making the other guests uncomfortable or causing the pigs to feel inadequate. 

Here are some highlights from the visit:

Located on several beautiful and well-maintained acres, Tamerlaine is a serene, peaceful refuge. 

This is Bubblegum, one of several goats rescued from a "Farm to Table" operation in Westfield, Massachusetts. Many people who consider themselves "conscientious omnivores" make a point of avoiding meat that comes from factory farms, and consume only meat that is the product of small-scale farming operations that market themselves as healthy, sustainable, and ethical alternatives to factory farms. The truth, however, is that as far as the well-being of the animals is concerned, many of these farms are just as bad as, and often worse than, factory farms. When the goats who now live at Tamerlaine were rescued, many of them were sick, all were emaciated, and the farm on which they were being raised was strewn with the decaying bodies of other animals who had died from neglect, disease, and starvation.    

This is Merci. She's one of several turkeys at Tamerlaine who was rescued from the meat trade. In commercial turkey-farming operations, which are concerned primarily with maximizing profits per square foot of space, turkeys are routinely mutilated, crammed together in huge windowless sheds, and killed when they are between five and six months old. In their natural habitat, turkeys can live to be ten years old, so turkeys raised for meat are slaughtered when they have reached only a fraction of their natural age. At Tamerlaine and other reputable sanctuaries, these gentle birds receive all the veterinary care they need, plenty of space, and lots of TLC.  

This is Artie. He's a potbelly pig who used to be someone's pet. When he failed to stop growing, he was given up by his guardians and he now lives an incredibly contented life with ample space to root around and no shortage of eager human hands to administer (pot)belly-rubs. Most pigs aren't as lucky as Artie, however. In the United States alone, 115,000,000 pigs are slaughtered annually for food. Untold tens of thousands more die from disease and stress before ever reaching the slaughterhouse, and their bodies are often simply ground up and fed to other pigs.   

If you've never given a belly-rub to a pig, you owe it to yourself to schedule one ASAP.  Artie's secretary is standing by. :)

This is Jacob, a Cornish rooster. Of all the terrestrial animals bred, raised, and slaughtered for food in the United States and around the world, the chicken is by far the most exploited and abused. According to United Poultry Concerns, chickens and turkeys constitute 99% of all land animals raised and slaughtered for food in the United States, and upwards of nine-billion chickens are slaughtered every year in the U.S. alone. Chickens raised for meat are typically killed when they are between twenty-eight and forty-one days old, but in their natural habitats, chickens can live for up to fifteen years. The chickens at Tamerlaine are beautiful examples of how well these intelligent animals can thrive when they are given adequate space, proper care, and the ability to establish and live within a natural social structure.

The holes in Bubblegum's ears are vestiges of his former life on a "Farm to Table" operation and reminders of the status of all animals bred and raised for food: that of a commodity. It is customary throughout the animal farming industry to tag or otherwise mutilate the ears of animals such as cows, goats, and pigs, for easy identification and to allow farmers to determine at a glance who is ready to be shipped to slaughter.

This is Fawn. Her ear tags were removed, and she is now happy and healthy, but she still bears the scars left by those who bred her into existence for the sole purpose of profiting off of her dismembered body.

There is no reason that the relationship between human beings and our nonhuman brothers and sisters should be one characterized by tyranny, exploitation, and oppression. Our superiority of strength and brain-power does not confer upon us the right to exploit and abuse nonhuman animals or to treat them like objects, commodities, and machines. Until we have recognized our kinship and equality with animals, and have resolved to treat them with the dignity, gentleness, and respect that they deserve, we have not realized our own moral potential.  (The rooster in the photo is Alvin.)

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If you live in the New York/New Jersey area, I encourage you to pay a visit to Tamerlaine Farm Animal Sanctuary, where you can meet some of these amazing animals in person. Please also consider supporting the work they do by either making a donation, or by purchasing some of their merchandise. 

If you live outside the NY/NJ area, please consult Vegan.com's farm animal sanctuary directory, which, though not 100% comprehensive, is still an excellent resource for anyone interested in visiting or supporting a sanctuary. 

All images Copyright 2017, Vegan Future Now

Michael Harren Brings Animal Rights Center Stage with The Animal Show

It is an axiom of activism that one person can make a difference. The person who made the difference for activist, composer, and performer Michael Harren's latest project, The Animal Show, was a chicken named Casey, whom he met while volunteering at the Tamerlaine Farm Animal Sanctuary in Montague, New Jersey. At the time of their first meeting, Casey was recovering from an illness in the farm's convalescence quarters, which Harren had the task of cleaning.

"I had never had any kind of interaction with a chicken before," he explains, as we discuss veganism, animal rights, and his new show in his impressively tidy Brooklyn apartment.

"So, I put my hand into her coop, not knowing what to expect. She came over and rested her head in my hand and closed her eyes, and I thought 'Oh my god, this animal is showing me affection right now! This chicken is a thinking, feeling, affectionate being'."   

Michael Harren at his home in Brooklyn 

Though Harren had been vegan for several years at that point, his reasons for not eating animals were mostly philosophical, stemming in part from an adherence to the ethics of nonviolence. But after visiting the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in Willow, New York in 2014 and participating in their Thanksliving celebration, a Thanksgiving-themed event in which the sanctuary's turkeys are the guests of honor, he began to see animals as individuals with personalities and desires.

"When I went vegan, I had made the connection between the meat on the grocery store shelves and the animal from whose body it had come, but what was missing for me was the realization that the animals themselves were individuals who wanted to live and who enjoyed living," he says. "In terms of how I relate to animals, that experience was a real turning point for me." It was on the car-ride back to Brooklyn after Thanksliving that Harren conceived The Animal Show, a 75-minute show that combines original electro-acoustic compositions with his personal stories about some of the animals he has met and gotten to know.

Harren, a Texas native with a salt-and-pepper beard and self-effacing sense of humor, informs me that he wrote The Animal Show over the course of about a year, during which time he was an artist-in-residence at the Tamerlaine Farm Animal Sanctuary. Many of the stories he tells in the show involve the friendships he made and interactions he had with the residents of Tamerlaine, including Casey and her friends.

"Once you take a moment to get to know these animals, what you realize is that they are not so different from us. They form friendships, they have mood swings, they mourn, they play, they laugh, they enjoy living, just like we do. Who are we to take that away from them?"

The Animal Show is playing at Dixon Place in New York City on October 27th, 28th, and 29th at 7:30 p.m.. For tickets, please visit DixonPlace.org.

Ritual Slaughter in New York City

If you're not one for open-air slaughterhouses, the overpowering stench of blood and feces on the streets and sidewalk, and the sound of terrified animals having their throats slit in the presence and with the assistance of children, then maybe New York City just isn't the place for you. For that is the distressing and anachronistic scene at an annual event that takes place in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, in which an estimated sixty-thousand young chickens are jammed into plastic crates, shipped into the city on trucks, left on the sidewalk without food or water, and then summarily slaughtered in an atavistic and violent atonement ritual known as kaporos.

Your first thought may be that such an overtly unsanitary and unhygienic and morally appalling festival must certainly be illegal in the Capital of The Modern World in the year 2016, and indeed it is illegal. The ritual sacrifice of live animals as described above and practiced within the city limits of New York violates no fewer than fifteen city and state public health and safety laws and statutes regarding cruelty to animals. And yet, it is an annual occurrence that the NYPD does not merely tolerate, but positively supports. Every year the NYPD and the mayor's office not only fail to enforce the very laws that it is their sworn duty and solemn responsibility to uphold, but are also complicit in the breaking of those laws by providing manpower, barricades, and generators to aid and abet the practitioners of these flagrantly illegal activities: activities that are a threat to public health and public safety and are also unimaginably painful and traumatic to the animals involved.

This disgraceful and inhumane practice must end now. And so must the willingness of the New York City Police Department and Mayor deBlasio to look the other way and grant impunity to those whose attachment to an obscure and violent religious tradition is being allowed to imperil public health and public safety and to subvert the laws that protect nonhuman animals from agonizing cruelty. The desire of a few small religious sects to adhere to the barbaric practice of sacrificing live animals in order to atone for their sins should not put other New Yorkers in the position of having to sacrifice our health, safety, and decency at the altar of religious tolerance.    

Below are photographs that Vegan Future Now took at this year's kaporos ritual in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Hovering over each photo with your cursor will reveal a description of the image.

Tens of thousands of live chickens are shipped into Brooklyn in small, cramped, feces-laden plastic crates.

This young chicken will have her throat slit open in order to make a human being feel better about the sins he or she has committed in the past year.

The practitioners invariably hold the chickens with their wings pinned behind their backs, which is incredibly painful for the birds.

No matter what your feelings about animal rights may be, I think we can all agree that no animal should be treated like a bag of groceries.

The NYPD provide barricades, manpower,  and generators to make sure this illegal activity goes off without a hitch.

Most of us would have to provide our own lights and electricity if we wanted to host an event that violates fifteen state and local laws, but the NYPD are happy to do their part to illuminate this illegal and bloody event.  

Animal rights activists showed up in great numbers to protest the cruel and anachronistic practice of animal sacrifice. 

Leaving aside the logically and morally indefensible practice of scapegoating through an atonement sacrifice, forcing children to witness ritual slaughter on such a massive scale is tantamount to child abuse. 

Just before I took this photo, a man standing beside me informed me very menacingly that the contents of this crate are his private property and if he saw me take a photo of it, he would break my camera. I took the photo and the man did nothing. Verbal and even physical abuse of protesters is a common occurrence at kaporos rituals.

A terrified young chicken is handed over to the man who will slit her throat open and toss her aside to bleed to death.

At no more than a few weeks old, this young chicken is sliced open in a ritual that should have ended thousands of years ago.  

Another victim of superstition and human cruelty.

This barbaric and unnecessary act is repeated 60,000 times over the course of just a few days on the streets of Brooklyn every year.

After their throats are slit, the chickens are tossed to a second slaughterhouse volunteer who places them headlong into inverted traffic cones, where they slowly bleed out.

Is this really the kind of work that children should be doing? Though there are laws on the books that forbid persons under 18 to work in slaughterhouses, those laws apparently don't apply to all of us equally. 

Once the chickens have bled out, they are thrown into garbage bags. The participants in and organizers of this event claim that the chickens slaughtered in the ritual are used as food for the less fortunate, though that claim seems incredibly dubious in light of the complete absence of sanitary standards observed before, during, and after slaughter.

This is where the chickens end up. Their bloody bodies are thrown by the hundreds into plastic bags, which are in turn thrown into a cargo van. This is not a refrigerated food service vehicle and in no sense of the word are these corpses being handled as if they were intended for human consumption.  

The blood of the innocent and defenseless does not cleanse your soul. It stains it. 

For more information, please visit EndChickensAsKaporos.com

  All images Copyright 2016 Vegan Future Now

  

Why Every Thinking Person Should Be An Environmentalist, and Every Environmentalist Should Be A Vegan

Let's begin by defining the only term in the title of this essay that might admit of some ambiguity: environmentalist. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an environmentalist is “one who is concerned with protecting and preserving the environment”. To be anything other than an environmentalist in this sense of the word then, is to lack concern for protecting and preserving the environment. And to lack concern for protecting and preserving the environment is to be indifferent to the inescapable fact that a healthy environment is necessary for the survival of the human race; for without clean water, fresh air, and healthy soil, human beings simply cannot live, or at least not for very long.

So, to be anything other than an environmentalist is to be indifferent to protecting and preserving the very system upon which human beings and all other forms of life as we know it rely for survival. Indifference to an issue as important as the survival of one's own species is at the very least unbecoming of a thinking person, and at worst imprudent, myopic, and destructive.  

With the exception of certain religious zealots who positively relish the idea of seeing the world engulfed in an apocalyptic conflagration, however, very few thinking people are keen to admit that they are indifferent to the survival of the human race. But the simple fact is that if you are not concerned with protecting and preserving the environment upon which human survival is utterly dependent (which is to say, if you are not an environmentalist), then aren't you, ipso facto, indifferent to human survival itself? For how can someone lack concern for the preservation and protection of that without which human survival is impossible and at the same time claim to be concerned with human survival itself? Because human survival cannot be uncoupled from a healthy environment, there is simply no reconciling not being an environmentalist with the claim that one is concerned for human survival. 

“Because human survival cannot be uncoupled from a healthy environment, there is simply no reconciling not being an environmentalist with the claim that one is concerned for human survival. ”

Every thinking person should be concerned about the survival of life as we know it on the only planet we have, and should therefore be concerned about protecting and preserving the system upon which life depends: the environment.

Ergo, every thinking person should be an environmentalist.

And every environmentalist should, obviously, do her utmost to support those industries and organizations that adhere to environmentally responsible, sustainable practices and (perhaps more important) should also withdraw her support from those that do not. Being an environmentalist is after all about much more than just separating the refuse from the recyclables and driving less; it's about making informed, considered, rational choices to support industries and organizations whose values and practices are consistent with the principles of environmentalism and to refuse to support those industries and organizations that are destroying the environment upon which we and all other species rely.

Animal agriculture is the number one driver of deforestation on the planet. In the United States alone, over 260 million acres of forest have been clearcut and converted to cropland for cattle.

And no industry is doing more to destroy the environment than the global animal by-product industry. No other industry in the world uses more natural resources, produces more pollution, or is responsible for more environmental degradation than the industry that produces meat, eggs, and dairy. Consider these statistics:

• Animal agriculture is the number one driver of deforestation on the planet. According to a report by the United Nations, 70% of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% that has been deforested since 1970, is now used as pasture for cattle.

• Raising animals for food uses 70% of the earth's arable land, equivalent to 30% of all the ice-free surface on the globe.

• Animal agriculture accounts for 50-70% of all fresh water used by human beings for all purposes. The production of just one pound of beef requires 2,500 gallons of fresh water.

• According to scientists at the World Bank, animal agriculture produces 51% of all man-made greenhouse gases, more than all forms of transportation combined and tripled.

• In the United States, untreated animal waste has polluted the ground-water in seventeen states. Thirty-five thousand miles of America's rivers in twenty-two states have been contaminated by the excrement from factory farms. Thirty-five thousand miles is fourteen times the distance from New York to Los Angeles, or one-and-a-half times the circumference of the Earth.

Taking all of the above facts into consideration, it's clear that animal agriculture is not an industry that any sincere environmentalist should be willing to support. In fact, there is no industry that is less deserving of an environmentalist's support than the global animal by-product industry. Whether your primary concern about the environment is climate change, deforestation, water pollution, or water scarcity, there is no way to square a willingness to support animal agriculture with the claim that one is an environmentalist, because a person cannot rightfully claim to be concerned about protecting and preserving the environment if he is unwilling to withdraw his support from the one industry that is doing more than any other to destroy the very environment that he claims to want to protect and preserve.

What does it mean, in practical terms, to withdraw one's support from animal agriculture? It means to stop buying and consuming the products of animal agriculture: meat, eggs, and dairy. It means being vegan.

Ergo, every environmentalist should be a vegan.

To be an environmentalist is to recognize your moral obligation to current and future generations of human beings as well as to the billions of other nonhuman animals with whom we share this planet and our brief time on it. Being vegan allows you to fulfill at least part of that obligation and to spare the lives of thousands of animals in the process.

What thinking person would say no to that?   

To learn more about the benefits of going vegan, please see the Why Go Vegan page of our Web site. And to get your free Vegan Starter Kit from the good folks at PETA, please click here.

(Full disclosure: Vegan Future Now has no formal affiliation with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. We just think they do awesome work.)