A prominent rabbi, Shmuel Herzfeld, just wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he questions whether the meat coming out of Iowa’s Agriprocessor’s plant can properly be labeled kosher. Herzfeld writes:
News reports and government documents have described abusive practices at Agriprocessors against workers, including minors. Children as young as 13 were said to be wielding knives on the killing floor; some teenagers were working 17-hour shifts, six days a week.
This poses a grave problem and calls into question whether the food processed in the plant qualifies as kosher.
You see, there is precedent for declaring something nonkosher on the basis of how employees are treated. Yisroel Salanter, the great 19th-century rabbi, is famously believed to have refused to certify a matzo factory as kosher on the grounds that the workers were being treated unfairly. In addition to the hypocrisy of calling something kosher when it is being sold and produced in an unethical manner, we have to take into account disturbing information about the plant that has come to light.
Herzfeld then criticizes national Jewish organizations for taking a wait-and-see attitude when it comes to evaluating the Agriprocessors situation. If kosher law is to mean anything, Herzfeld is asking precisely the questions that need to be asked. Link.
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