The city of Los Angeles Animal Services department “will be ready and available” to respond to animal cruelty calls about kapparot, Mark Salazar, director of field operations at L.A. Animal Services said on the evening of Sept. 8 at a Los Angeles Board of Animal Services Commissioners meeting.
In a public setting where the humane treatment of Los Angeles’ varied animal population is often on the agenda, the subject was chickens and how they are treated in preparation for the annual ritual of kapparot. For the ritual to expiate sins, practiced by some Orthodox Jews between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a live chicken is swung overhead for each person, then slaughtered according to the laws of kashrut.
At Animal Services Commissioners meeting, held at the Best Friends Animal Society shelter in Mission Hills, Salazar, director of field operations at L.A. Animal Services, opened the discussion by detailing to the commissioners his department’s position on animal cruelty crimes.
Speaking of the city’s prosecution rates in humane mistreatment cases, he said, “We take it very seriously,” and added that some violators have received jail time.
Asked specifically about kapparot by Commissioner Jennifer Brent, Salazar said, “We respond to all types of humane violations the same, it doesn’t make a difference what activity is going on, or not. Our concern is for the animal.” Approximately 70 people attended the public meeting; about half came to hear how the city plans to enforce animal cruelty laws with regards to the religious ritual of kapparot.
During the public comment period after Salazar’s presentation, among the many who spoke about the cruelty to the chickens used in the kapparot ceremony, were Rabbi Jonathan Klein leader of Faith Action for Animals, and David Simon, who has filed a lawsuit against several defendants who practice kapparot with chickens.
Also speaking was Sherstin Rosenberg, a Jewish veterinarian who runs along with her daughter Zoe the Happy Hen Chicken Rescue in San Louis Obispo, which Zoe founded 2014 when she was only 11. “The hens that are used in the kapparot ceremony are taken from the egg industry,” Rosenberg told the commissioners. “These are spent hens” many of which she found to “suffer from severe osteoporosis,” she said.
During kapparot, when the hen’s wings are pulled back, and the hen swung around, she said, “most of these hens probably suffer multiple bone fractures. That constitutes extreme animal cruelty.”
Rosenberg said that in 2014 she rescued several hens that planned to be used in the annual ritual.
She has also rescued hundreds of hens from the egg industry, she said, but among the kapparot chickens, she “had never seen such stark terror,” she said.
Though the public comment period was open to anyone who attended, no one spoke in defense of kapparot.
Commissioner Larry Gross weighed in on the issue by citing the Chabad website. “It is of utmost importance to treat these chickens humanely and not cause them any pain or suffering,” he said.
He added he believes, “The First Amendment protects the actual ritual.” But the act of forcing chickens “to sit in transport crates and not providing food or water, any care at all, is not protected or condoned by the first amendment,” he said.
“The best way that we can honor the High Holy Days is by joining with these activists, and becoming involved,” said Gross, who along with commissioners Brent, Roger Wolfson, and David Zaft, expressed support for the position of the activists.
“The Day of Atonement should be about embracing and caring, a protective relationship with animals, not destroying them,” Gross said, reading from prepared remarks.
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