Activists Who Exposed Meat Industry Reveal Their Own (Kosher) Identity

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*Activists Who Exposed Meat Industry Reveal Their Own (Kosher) Identity *

 

By Marissa Brostoff

/The Forward/, Wed. Apr 30, 2008

http://www.forward.com/articles/13264/

 

When AgriProcessors, America's largest kosher slaughterhouse, was caught

on tape conducting what a federal agency later called " acts of inhumane

slaughter, " officials at the plant knew they had been infiltrated by

undercover investigators. What the company didn't know was that two of

those infiltrators were a married couple who keep kosher themselves.

 

Meet Hannah and Philip Schein, undercover investigators for the animal

rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Now, for the

first time, they are going public with their identities.

 

Since 2002, the Scheins have taken on about 20 undercover cases, as well

as others they have conducted publicly. The targets of their stings have

run the gamut from an egg farm managed by Trappist monks, to a Canadian

bear-baiting operation that has supplied fur to the British Royal

Guards, to songstress Beyoncé Knowles, once an enthusiastic wearer of fur.

 

But thanks to their background and their knowledge of the laws of

kashrut, Hannah, 33, and Philip, 43, have come to specialize in

investigating kosher slaughterhouses. Indeed, PETA had not investigated

kosher operations until the Scheins came on board; since then, the group

has been involved in about eight such cases. Philip in particular has

been credited with becoming an expert on kosher slaughter.

 

" If it weren't for Philip and his interest and pursuit of this issue,

I'm not sure that we would have been able to do those investigations, "

said Daphna Nachminovitch, PETA's vice president of cruelty

investigations. " They were Philip's brainchild. "

 

The Scheins' --- and PETA's --- first investigation of a kosher

slaughterhouse took place in 2004, when the organization obtained

footage of cows walking around with their throats cut at AgriProcessors'

plant in Postville, Iowa. Hannah had trained the investigators who went

undercover for the exposé, and Philip analyzed the video footage that

PETA subsequently received.

 

Under pressure from rabbis as well as animal rights groups and

government agencies, the company promised to change its slaughtering

procedures, though AgriProcessors has been the subject of several more

of the Scheins' investigations.

 

An AgriProcessors representative declined to comment for this article.

But Norman Schlaff, the owner of the Musicon Farm in Gosha, N.Y., was

willing to discuss his experience with the Scheins, who paid an

undercover visit to his kosher deer slaughterhouse last year.

 

Schlaff said that two young people who appeared to be a Modern Orthodox

couple toured the farm and, like many of his visitors who wish to ensure

that their meat is kosher, took videos and photographs of the

slaughtering process.

 

" The next day, PETA called and said, 'Go on the Internet,' " Schlaff said.

 

He found a page on the group's Web site that accused slaughterers at the

farm of sitting on the deer to hold them down while their throats are

slit, an allegation that Schlaff denies. " It was really very

disturbing, " Schlaff said of the unwelcome attention he received after

the PETA article. " I got thousands of e-mails, including some death

threats from people saying, 'We're going to do to you what you do to the

deer.' "

 

The Scheins maintain that they want only for kosher slaughter to live up

to what they consider its original purpose: to minimize the suffering of

the animals. Orthodox Jewish standards of kashrut have " gotten so

focused on the letter of the law that they've lost sight of the fact

that [kashrut] is about reducing suffering, " Hannah said.

 

But according to Rabbi Menachem Genack, head of the Orthodox Union's

kashrut division, liberal Jews such as the Scheins are using the term

" kosher " as a " generic phrase " to denote practices they consider morally

acceptable, thus missing the " fundamental issue " of kashrut: obedience

to Jewish law.

 

Hannah and Philip are currently working (openly) on a project to reform

what they say are animal abuses committed in ultra-Orthodox

neighborhoods in the course of observing the pre-Yom Kippur absolution

ritual known as kapparot.

 

The kapparot crackdown may cause a stir in such Orthodox enclaves as

Brooklyn's Boro Park, but it probably will not get as much attention on

celebrity gossip blogs as Hannah's encounter last year with Beyoncé.

After PETA won a dinner with the singer in an auction, Hannah and a

second PETA employee, armed with a hidden camera, sat down with her ---

and accused the star of being complicit in the abuse of animals by using

fur in her wardrobe and in her clothing line, House of Deréon.

 

" I can't tell you how quickly they escorted us out of there, " Hannah

said. She added that Beyoncé has not been seen in fur since.

 

Though a glimpse at the Scheins' career makes them sound like Erin

Brockovich-style crusaders, their partnership started out far more

innocuously. Hannah and Philip met at a 1998 orientation for new

professionals in the Jewish campus organization Hillel. They married a

year later in New Jersey, right after Hillel's 1999 conference ended.

 

In 2002, Hannah took a job in PETA's investigations department, and the

Scheins moved from upstate New York, where both had been working on

graduate degrees, to a town near Norfolk, Va., where PETA is

headquartered. Shortly thereafter, Philip, a longtime vegan and animal

rights advocate, joined Hannah at the organization.

 

The Scheins have decided to go public as part of a publicity bid for

PETA. Despite the sensitive nature of their undercover work, they say

they are not worried about the media attention.

 

Their confidence in their ability to carry on undercover investigations

--- and to have carried out so many in the first place --- appears to be

rooted in the techniques they use when they go undercover, which they

will not divulge.

 

" We're still active investigators, so we don't really share our

methods, " Hannah said.

 

But she added, " Everything we do is legal. "