ECO-KASHRUT

Why did G-d give us these seemingly pointless rules about what we should and shouldn't eat?  It turns out that perhaps we should follow these rules in part...to save our G-d given planet (and our G-d given lives, which require this planet in order to continue living.  If you don't believe me, then I suggest you try and live on the surface of Mars or Venus...)

How does not eating pork or oysters save Planet Earth? Well, a friend of mine recently told me of a scientific conference he attended in which some environmental researchers presented findings on the effects of "confined animal feeding operations," or CAFO's.  Check out the Sierra Club's web page, I think this is one of their environmental priorities.

It seems that the state of North Carolina, for example, has a population of tens of millions of swine.  These are not swine who contentedly wallow in mud in small groups.  No, these swine are jam-packed into little tin houses (I wonder how hot it gets inside those houses during a typical Carolina summer?  The pork must get thoroughly cooked even before it reaches the slaughterhouse.  Maybe this is a technique to prevent trichinosis.) and spend most of their time eating and producing what I shall delicately refer to as "waste matter."  This waste matter is washed out into large lagoons, the overflow of which ends up in local creeks and rivers, and eventually into the large coastal estuaries.  Think about that the next time you vacation on the Outer Banks.  Periodically, these lagoons suffer massive failures, especially when hurricaines blow up the coast.  The lagoon walls fail, and, in the words of Carl Sagan a"h, "billions and billions" of gallons of porcine waste matter get flushed into the streams killing everything in its path.  I would certainly not want to be living on the floodplain downstream from such a waste lagoon!

This is not only un-aesthetic, but animal waste has been implicated as one factor that triggers blooms of the toxic form of the dinoflagellate pfiesteria  (or similar organisms).  This is the famed "cell from hell" that kills (kosher) fish and causes severe neurotoxic symptoms in humans exposed to water containing pfiesteria cells.

So basically, unless you're sure you're eating free-range pork from a small-scale grower, you're contributing to severe environmental degradation. So by keeping kosher, you're helping to save the earth.

Now as for oysters.  These critters sit still in one place, and feed themselves by sucking in the water, and extracting food from the small sediment particles in the water.  A hundred years ago, when oyster reefs in Chesapeake  Bay were so common that they were a hazard to navigation, scientists estimate that these animals filtered the entire volume of water in the Bay in three days.  After 100 years of over harvesting (with a goodly number of these eaten, I'm sorry to say, by newly non-observant Jewsih immigrants and their descendants), it now takes over 60 days for the greatly reduced oyster population of Cheseapke bay to filter the Bay's water.  This has had an effect on the water quality in the Bay, and on the health of the kosher fisheries.  What's happening in Chesapeake Bay is beinbg repeated worldwide in coastal waters.  So by keeping kosher, you're helping reviive oyster populations and saving th earth.

G-d was indeed wise when he gave us the Torah complete with these simple rules for saving the Earth!

Rabbi Ezekeiel Rox
Chief Rabbi of the Internet
 

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