Animal Rights Group Plasters 300 Anti-Kaporos Posters Throughout NYC
Animals: Tradition - Philosophy - Religion

FROM TheirTurn.net
September 2020

The Kaporos poster campaign targets NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio because he has ignored the pleas of animal rights and public health advocates to stop Kaporos from taking place due to the fact that it violates city and state health and cruelty laws and jeopardizes the public health.

Bill de Blasio
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The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos has plastered 300 large posters throughout New York City in an effort to call attention to the risk of zoonotic disease transmission during Kaporos, an animal slaughter ritual that takes place each year in the week leading up to Yom Kippur. During Kaporos, practitioners swing live chickens around their heads without PPE and kill them in makeshift slaughterhouses erected without permits on public streets in violation of eight NYC health codes.

Each year, factory farms in New Jersey and Pennsylvania deliver over 100,000 live chickens to Kaporos vendors in Williamsburg, Borough Park and Crown Heights and several other neighborhoods in New York City. The chickens are typically held in crates on public streets for up to several days with no food, water or protection from weather extremes, conditions that weaken the animals’ immune systems and make them vulnerable to disease.

caged Chickens
Over 100,000 chickens are intensively confined in crates for up to several days leading up to the Kaporos ritual. Chickens who died from hunger, thirst, exposure or illness are often found in crates with the live chickens (photo: Unparalleled Suffering Photography)

kaporos dangers
During Kaporos, public streets and sidewalks are contaminated with the body parts and blood of thousands of chickens who are killed in makeshift slaughterhouses erected without permits in violation of eight NYC health codes. (photo: Suzanne Stein Photography)

Thousands of chickens die in their crates each year from hunger, thirst, exposure and disease before they are used in the ritual, and many of the chickens who practitioners physically handle during the ritual show signs of respiratory disease. Of the tens of thousands of people who partake in the ritual, only a small fraction wear protective gear, such as gloves. It’s this kind of interaction between humans and sick animals that triggered the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to putting the public at risk of another zoonotic disease outbreak, the large Kaporos gatherings throughout Brooklyn could be “super-spreader” events for COVID-19 because the Hasidic Jewish communities do not practice social distancing or wear masks.

The Kaporos poster campaign targets NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio because he has ignored the pleas of animal rights and public health advocates to stop Kaporos from taking place due to the fact that it violates city and state health and cruelty laws and jeopardizes the public health.

Mayor de Blasio’s Health Commissioners have refused to address a toxicology report that outlines the risk posed by the mass slaughter of over 100,000 animals on public streets during Kaporos.

According to a toxicologist who studied fecal and blood samples taken during Kaporos, the ritual “constitutes a dangerous condition” and “poses a significant public health hazard.” In recent years, several New Yorkers who did not partake in the ritual contracted E. coli and campylobacter after coming into contact with these contaminants. Advocates believe that many Kaporos practitioners have also gotten sick but that the insular Hasidic communities would not report the illnesses to the Department of Health.

“The Police and Health Commissioners are political appointees, and their boss, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, has clearly instructed them to assist in Kaporos because the practitioners represent a powerful voting bloc,” said Donny Moss, an organizer in the effort to compel the city to enforce the laws. “Not only does the City provides police barricades, floodlights and an army of police officers and sanitation workers, but it also provides the traffic cones where tens of thousands of chickens are bled out onto public streets.”

“The Police and Health Commissioners are political appointees, and their boss, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, has clearly instructed them to assist in Kaporos because the practitioners represent a powerful voting bloc,” said Donny Moss, an organizer in the effort to compel the city to enforce the laws. “Not only does the City provides police barricades, floodlights and an army of police officers and sanitation workers, but it also provides the traffic cones where tens of thousands of chickens are bled out onto public streets.”


City health codes that are violated during Kaporos

For more information, visit Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos.

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