So Much to Blog About, So Little Time

AgriProcessors is facing criticism for food safety issues. Failed Messiah has posted a union's complaint about the matter as well as various documents from the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service here. Here is a summary from Jewschool:

According to the Forward, in March and September of 2006 the USDA sent the AgriProcessors plant manager a “Letter of Warning” reviewing a series of problems, including: receiving 250 non-compliance records from the United States Department of Agriculture during 2006, five of them for inadequate safeguards against Mad Cow disease, and at least 18 records for fecal matter in the food production area (Including one, on December 26, in which the inspector wrote that during multiple checks of 10 chickens “fecal contamination varied between 70 and 80%.” and another, similar, citation a day later).

In other news ...

• AgriProcessors is also under fire for violent altercations between its immigrant workers and other residents of Postville, Iowa.
• Earlier this month when I was off e-mail for a few days, there was some interesting controversy about kapparot from public health and cruelty-to-animals perspectives. Click here to read Failed Messiah's comprehensive recap. Kapparot will take place just over a month from now.
• Check out The Jew & The Carrot's recent posts about Isa Chandra Moskowitz's vegan cupcakes and Hechsher Tzedek.
• There's an article in The Jewish Week that discusses how much kosher meat isn't produced under ethical and humane standards. Here are some highlights:

On a cool November morning, I headed toward the hills of Pennsylvania, to visit the only organic kosher chicken company I could locate.

But when I reached the farm, the chicken coops exuded a stench so overpowering I didn’t want to stay long. And under the crisp winds of autumn, the chickens seldom left their dimly lit, crowded sheds. ...

I can’t imagine how anyone can comfortably digest reports that AgriProcessors, which makes Aaron’s Best kosher products, engaged in “acts of inhumane slaughter,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

I, too, eat commercially produced kosher chicken and meat. But when I do, a small part of me rebels, feeling almost as defiled as I would if I learned that pork bits flavored a spinach dish I’d eaten. . . .

[T]he stakes are higher than satisfying one little boy’s hunger. It’s an ethical imperative that we follow not only the letter of the law, but the spirit too. Don’t chicken out.