Religious Slaughter of Animals

I know it seems very terrible, but consider that the ancients knew that killing has a price. The price you pay is the pain and sadness of causing death - that pain should stay with you to remind you that killing should never be easy, and that our activity and life choices have a blood price. We were never meant to push these activities to someone else. As someone who practices a tradition involving sacrifice I struggle with it each and every day time. This is by design: 1) my sacrifice is complete and genuine; 2) I feel a deep appreciation for the lives I have taken; 3) I value their lives and my own; 4) my tradition is a deep commitment that is never taken lightly; 5) the food that results is given freely to my community; 6) I work to restrict and minimize how much death I cause in other circumstances.

Nothing about my approach is capricious, vile, or primitive. Instead it is specific, deeply rooted in respect, and integrated into a larger worldview in which I am part of an ecosystem that I may not violate. We kill (we are animals that eat other animals), and killing should always remind us of the price we pay for it.

I don’t require that other people understand this, but consider how distant you are from the human deaths that you are complicit in daily. You are the cause of hundreds of thousands of deaths and you don’t lift a finger. Human lives and animal lives are disposable in the West, and the religion responsible is neither Islam nor Judaism.