Chicken Killings Put Politics Before Health, Activists Say

NEW YORK CITY HALL — City officials are risking a public health disaster for politics' sake by continuing to allow ritual chicken slaughters in Brooklyn, activists charged Tuesday. Coming off a big legal defeat, opponents of Kaporos — a Jewish atonement ritual that involves killing the fowl — argued Mayor Bill de Blasio and his administration are sitting on their haunches to appease a "powerful voting bloc."

Activists maintained their call for the city to enforce its own laws and put a stop to the practice, which they say could sicken New Yorkers.

"The mayor is literally putting politics ahead of public health, because he might want to run for higher office and he might want the votes of this voting bloc," activist Donny Moss said at a rally outside City Hall. "This is an outrage."

Thousands of chickens are killed in Brooklyn each year for Kaporos, a custom practiced annually leading up to Yom Kippur. Practitioners believe the sacred ritual will protect them and their families in the coming new year.

An association of anti-slaughter advocates, the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos, sued in state court to force city agencies to stop the ritual, arguing it poses a public health hazard and is cruel to the animals.

But the state Court of Appeals handed the group a significant defeat on Nov. 14 by upholding a lower court's ruling dismissing the lawsuit.

"As far as the legal case is concerned, the state’s highest court has spoken," city Law Department spokesman Nick Paolucci said. "Plaintiffs cannot compel the city to enforce the law in a particular manner. That’s within the city’s discretion."

The ruling, though "devastating," did not hold that the Kaporos slaughters are legal, said Nora Constance Marino, the advocates' lead attorney in the case.

The city still has latitude to enforce the various laws that would stop the ritual as it's currently practiced, Marino said. She added that her group is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review its legal case, though she is unsure whether it will do so.

"The mayor, the Police Department and the Health Department should exercise their discretion and do the right thing and enforce these laws for the protection of the citizens, protection of the animals, to prevent an epidemic, a health crisis," Marino said.

A toxicology expert's report addressed to Marino found chicken blood, feathers and limbs, as well as E. coli bacteria, at Kaporos sites in Brooklyn in 2015. The ritual practices "pose a significant public health hazard," the report concluded.

Two chicken rescuers said they experienced such risks first-hand. Dawn Ladd contracted a bacterial infection in 2016 from her contact with dozens of chickens taken from Kaporos sites, she said, forcing her to put off hip replacement surgery. While she's uncertain what exactly the infection was, she said E. coli showed up in test results.

Kurt Andernach said he was also infected with E. coli in his work with about 180 rescued birds at the And-Hof Farm Sanctuary in upstate Catskill despite wearing protective gear.

The bacteria made Andernach "violently sick" and compromised his immune system so much that he was later diagnosed with the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes mononucleosis, he said.

While the two activists had more direct contact with the chickens than the typical passerby, they said the killings could still endanger other New Yorkers.

"When you have high concentrations of these sick birds, it's just a matter of time until something catastrophic happens," Andernach said.

But a spokesman for the city Department of Health said Kaporos is not considered a big public health concern.

"We have not found Kaporos to be a significant public health threat — our surveillance has shown no increase in illness associated with the practice — and this ritual is a sacred practice for some Orthodox Jews," the spokesman, Christopher Miller, said in a statement.

(Lead image: Opponents of Kaporos chicken slaughters rallied outside City Hall on Tuesday. Photo by Noah Manskar/Patch)