I don’t use chickens. After witnessing years of chickens wallowing in their own feces in small cages waiting to be schechted for the ritual of Kapparot before Yom Kippur, I gave up on this custom. I once was enamored of this ancient ritual whereby the sins of a person are symbolically transferred to the chicken, which is then slaughtered and given to the poor to eat. It was exotic. But no more, I find it reprehensible for Jews to behave this way to animals.
I routinely travel to the places where these chickens are being slaughtered and document the conditions. The laws in Judaism about how to treat animals are being flagrantly violated. Cramped into cages they can’t event stand up in, or in cardboard boxes — yes cardboard boxes — the chickens are out in the hot sun, without water, wallowing in feces. The entire operation has a smell that is so foul I have thrown-up.
As an orthodox Jew I speak out that this custom must change.There is no way today to perform this ritual in a humane way, simply because the number of chickens being used for the ritual is so enormous.
The Rabbis long ago said that the ritual can be done with money. The money is then given to tzedakah. Use the amount that is spent on a chicken – usually about 18$ a bird. One waves the money over the head, or the head of your children, and recite sthe same verses. There is no difference to how the ritual is performed, except that this is not “A Mitzvah which comes from a Sin,” which is obviously frowned upon.
Next we need to talk about factory farming.
wallowing in feces?? I can understand if there is something extraordinary being done that should be reported but wallowing in feces is how poultry and dairy cattle live from the day they are born. When I first got to kibbutz and started working in the coops (next to the dairy in fact), I too thought it was mud, but was quickly corrected. The ‘first day in the coop’, the birds get nice wood shavings that are entirely covered within a few days and eventually can be a few inches deep when removed at the end of the batch. I was warned that I would soon be a vegetarian, but instead I started eating turkey for the first time and was proud when the dining room served it.
I think the cage in the picture you attached is actually for turkeys, so those chickens had much more space than the usual cages they get stuffed into on the way to the shochet. I don’t think you want anything standing up on the way to shochet (sometimes a long drive), this would cause broken legs which make them treif and a major loss to the farm.
As for the smell, I got used to it. Although it does get unbearable when there is a water leak or the birds go through a diarrhea spell. Yuck.