Although eating animal flesh is permitted, the Torah guides us through several mitzvot to treat animals with compassion. In doing so, it also directs us to recognize the moral difficulty involved in eating meat, preparing us for the future era when we will no longer eat it. We will briefly review six Torah mitzvot that address this concern.
The first is the prohibition against eating a limb from a living animal (ever min ha-ḥai). The cruelty is clear: one may not take flesh from a creature still in pain, let alone eat it. This mitzva applies to Noaḥ’s descendants as well. Although they may eat any living creature and do not require sheḥita, they may take meat from it only after it has died.
The second is the mitzva of sheḥita. We are commanded to slaughter an animal at the neck, and any animal that has not undergone sheḥita is a neveila and forbidden to eat. This law applies to birds and wild animals as well. Although sheḥita is a divine statute whose full reason we do not understand, it clearly expresses compassion, as will be explained below (18:3). Birds are less developed than domesticated and wild animals, and therefore the Torah requires only one of the two simanim to be cut. Fish and locusts, whose brains and nervous systems are less developed, and whose experience of pain is presumably more limited, require no sheḥita at all. The prohibition against eating a limb from a living animal also does not apply to them (below, 15:1, principle 2; 17:7–8; 18:11).
The third is the prohibition against eating the blood of domesticated animals, wild animals, and birds. Sefer ha-Ḥinukh explains that eating blood is especially cruel, because an animal’s blood resembles human blood, and its life-force is bound up with it (Sefer ha-Ḥinukh, mitzva 148).
The fourth is the mitzva to cover the blood of a wild animal or bird after sheḥita (below, 18:9–10). There is an element of cruelty in eating meat while the animal’s blood lies spilled on the ground. Additionally, covering the blood expresses a certain shame over the fact that we must slaughter animals in order to eat their flesh.
The fifth is the prohibition against slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day (below, 18:8). Although we are permitted to slaughter an animal for food, the Torah commanded us not to slaughter a mother animal and its young on the same day, as doing so contains an element of cruelty (Sefer ha-Ḥinukh, mitzva 294). There is also concern that the slaughterer might kill the young in front of its mother, or the mother in front of its young, thereby greatly increasing their suffering (Moreh Nevukhim 3:48).
The sixth is the mitzva of sending away the mother bird. According to many commentators, this mitzva too is meant to prevent the mother’s suffering (below, chapter 16).
We see, then, that although the Torah permitted us to eat meat, it sought to prevent that permission from making us cruel or indifferent to animal suffering. It therefore gave us several mitzvot that limit animals’ pain and keep us from adding to it unnecessarily (see below, 15:9, regarding cruelty to animals in the food industry).[3]
