Two weeks ago I had the privilege of performing a shechita presentation for the excellent Ramah of the Rockies Summer camp for a thirds straight year. The kids that attend are always full of questions and so curious to understand where meat comes from. While most people do all they can to shield themselves and their kids from facing these questions I’ve found that children actually cope much more skillfully with animal slaughter than many of the adults I meet. But my short presentations can only do so much, to truly change the way society relates to animals we must begin exposing our children to the realities of meat production much sooner and more regularly.

It's been years since I first watched the famous undercover Peta video portraying a botched "kosher" slaughter at the Rubashkin's agriprocessors facility. The clip depicts workers not only being cruel and sloppy in their treatment of animals but also shows them  conducting a halachikly forbidden act called na'a'nua. Na'a'nua is preformed by violently tugging on the trachea of an animal in order to pull free adhesion in the lung so that they will not be found during a later inspection. This practice makes properly checking the lungs impossible and is strictly forbidden under Jewish law and doing such painful thing to a live and conscious animal makes this act of kosher fraud all the more heinous and despicable.