My previous post laid out the reasons why – while the tzedek hekhsher and ethical kashrut are wonderful intentions – the business practicalities beg answering. Indeed, it’s an open question if our little 2% of the meat market will make an impact on the greater meat industry.

But this post is hopefully “the other hand,” and at the very least inspiration as to how working with kashrut authorities might indeed yield a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community — one which leads to a healthier and more sustainable world for everyone.

Our shochet was amazing. Rabbi Yehuda Benchimhoun, an Algerian-descended French Jew of Lubavitch conviction, is a reluctant but intense shochet whose story and words impressed us all here, but above all his kavannah, his incredible intentionality with the animals he shechts. More than just being a six day a week vegetarian, he impressed us all with the seriousness with which he approached his duty to honor the life of animals. He was deliberate, he was careful, he was precise. And his respect for the letter of the law alongside its intent was phenomenal.

But aside from his quiet but intense adherence to the intent of halakha, he impressed me most when he related this story, forgive my paraphrasing:

I was shechting for a big manufacturer and one day they delivered to the slaughterhouse on my schedule 290 cattle in rail taxis designated for the occupancy of only 150. And they had not been fed or watered in three days, either! So I told them I wouldn’t shecht. Those animals were not kosher. The manufacturer was incredibly upset, of course, but I refused. I told them to call my rabbi in Crown Heights – and my rabbi supported me. He said, “If Yehuda says they’re not kosher, then they’re not kosher!”

We had learned earlier that day that animals are not fed the night before shechting but must absolutely be fed water; three days without food or water was a cruelty. To hear such stories of shochetim within the industry pushing back against the pressure to kill more cattle, more cheaply, less humanely while retaining the technical title of “kosher” is — why should I be so surprised? — surprising. In a really holy way.

But this also Rabbi Yehuda effused as I drove him back to the train station – “You couldn’t have picked a better moshgiach then Rabbi Mandel. This was so good for him to see, 50 or 60 Jews” – I interrupted to tell him conference attendance was actually 250 – “asking about kashrut and humane treatment of animals.” He continued, saying the Orthodox Union needs to see that, needs to feel pressure from Jews to verify that their policies are really living up to the intent of the law, what they espouse to be true about kashrut. Consumer pressure on kashrut agencies, he stressed, will keep kosher food kosher.

Rabbi Yehuda was clearly thinking about just the kosher market, not the whole meat industry, but his sincerity and honesty were inspiring. After my initial skepticisms that the kosher market was no different than mainstream slaughter, including an initial post on the subject, he convinced me (without trying) that the years of study and the regulations of the kashrut agencies themselves do indeed make kosher slaughter more likely to be ethical.

Rabbi Yehuda is right. For the first time in a long time, the OU is answering demands of Jews – ordinary Jews of all denominations – to ensure the spirit and letter of the law match. As industrial meat production evolves, so should kashrut authorities’ oversight, and they will do so only to the extent that their consumers demand them to. The OU is a religious business, caught between God’s Word and Adam Smith’s invisible hand. And in both cases, it is Jews who act as the deciders of which direction the word and the hand affect our dinner plates. Even if we’re just 2%, as Rabbi Steve Greenberg said the last night, we are not separate from the whole and our communal power to influence is much greater.

Which Hazon and this Food Conference already made a significant step towards. Congrats to all on their bravery and sensitivity.