On June 12, 2014, I spoke on a panel at the New York City Bar Association as part of a panel on Kapparos, which involves ritual use of chickens. An animal advocate, Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns, gave a presentation in which she showed photos of the various abuses of chickens used in the Kapparos event. Karen and her group are part of a campaign to end the use of chickens as Kapparos.
An audio recording of the event can be found here.
Let me be clear: I oppose the use of chickens as Kapparos–or for any other purpose. And I like Karen Davis personally; I am glad that she was out there beginning in the mid-1980s trying to sensitize people to the plight of chickens, who are, with fish, the animals most exploited by humans but were often overlooked even by animal advocates. I appreciate that she promotes veganism more than many other charities do but I disagree with some of the welfarist campaigns she has supported and I am bothered by the anti-Kapparos campaign.
Why?
Nothing Karen showed in her presentation is behavior that does not occur as part of the process of slaughtering all chickens. For example, she showed pictures of what appeared to be Hasidic men holding the chickens in ways that caused them pain. But the only difference between how chickens are often held and handled at slaughterhouses, and how they are held or handled at the Kapparos event, is the fact that in the latter, it is Hasidim or other Jews doing the holding and handling. If these poor birds were not used in the Kapparos ritual, they would have been sent to the slaughterhouse and would have had the exact same fate.
This is a perfect example of what is wrong with single-issue campaigns: they encourage the idea that what some group does is worse than what the rest of us do. A single-issue campaign focused on fur lets everyone who wears wool or leather off the hook and gives them an excuse to hate or attack those (mostly women) who wear fur. A single issue campaign about the dolphins at Taiji allows people, many of whom are not even vegan, to engage in vile ethnocentric and xenophobic hate speech against the Japanese. A single-issue campaign against a squirrel-shooting in a rural community encourages people to call those involved “rednecks” and “backward” when they are doing nothing different from what any non-vegan does or supports. And a campaign focused on Kapparos gives people an excuse to segregate the Jews as “bad people.”
I think that the Kapparos campaign enables and facilitates anti-Semitism. I am not saying that anyone connected with the campaign or who supports the campaign is anti-Semitic. I am saying that the campaign effectively segregates Jews as morally different from all other animal exploiters. It’s functionally indistinguishable from anti-Kashrut campaigns or the Islamophobic anti-Halal campaign in the United Kingdom.
Moreover, I spent some time looking at the Alliance to End Chickens as Koporos site. I saw nothing that indicated that the campaign was a vehicle for promoting veganism, which is what was claimed when I raised concerns. That is,the Kapparos campaign is not maintaining that Kapporos is like all other chicken slaughter and that it ought all to be stopped because we cannot justify consuming animals. Rather, it is very explicitly seeking to segregate this practice as objectionable without recognizing that it is indistinguishable from what most people support and participate in if they consume chicken or other animal products.
As Vincent Guihan has noted:
If a group ran a crusade against Jewish methods of circumcision — and just Jewish circumcision — and then denied that the campaign was Antisemitic, I think most people would likely disagree and see this for what it is: a shameful, calculating and completely unacceptable campaign that further denigrates an already marginalized community in order to ingratiate the majority.Almost all single-issue campaigns actively encourage segregation. And that is not a good thing for humans or nonhumans.
Single-issue campaigns are, on many levels, a very bad idea. They serve one primary purpose: fund-raising devices for animal charities. This is not to say that animal charities intentionally embrace campaigns that they know to be counterproductive in order to make money. It is, however, to explain the practical motivation that helps to account for why such welfare reform campaigns and single-issue campaigns are chosen and the failure to see how counterproductive they are.
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If you are not vegan, please go vegan. Veganism is about nonviolence. First and foremost, it’s about nonviolence to other sentient beings. But it’s also about nonviolence to the earth and nonviolence to yourself.
The World is Vegan! If you want it.
Gary L. Francione
Board of Governors Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University
©2014 Gary L. Francione
ADDENDUM ADDED June 16, 2014:
I respectfully request that if the Alliance for Kaporos continues this campaign, that it place on the Alliance website, and include in all future petitions, correspondence, and presentations, a statement to the effect that:
“The Alliance acknowledges that the use of chickens as Kapparos is not distinguishable from the transport and slaughter of chickens in non-religious contexts and the Alliance does not maintain that anyone involved in the Kapparos event is engaged in conduct that is morally more odious than those who engage in the slaughter of chicken in non-religious contexts, or those who consume chicken (or other animal products). Therefore, the Alliance promotes veganism and its opposition to Kapparos should be seen in that context and not as directed specifically at the community involved in this practice.”
This is not to say that I would then agree with or support the campaign. I would not. I am still concerned that such a campaign segregates a group and makes them the “bad” people for doing whatever everyone else does. I am only suggesting a possible way that may help to mitigate the problematic tone of this campaign and make clear that animal exploitation is not something others do and, on the contrary, is something engaged in by almost everyone.
The post The Kapparos Campaign: A Good Example of What’s Wrong with Single-Issue Campaigns appeared first on Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach.
Related posts:
Is Every Campaign a Single-Issue Campaign?
A Short Note on Abolitionist Veganism as a Single Issue Campaign
Single-Issue Campaigns in Human & Nonhuman Contexts
Single-Issue Campaigns and the Adoption/Fostering of Homeless Nonhuman Animals
On Johnny Weir, Single-Issue Campaigns, Treatment, and Abolitionist Veganism
