Q&A: Animal Products
Animal Products
Question
Hello,
I asked about animal products and the moral and halakhic aspect of this, as is well known, whether leather and wool are by-products of various industries or not.
There are various solutions to this; for example, regarding tefillin, it is permitted to use the hide of an animal that died a natural death, without slaughter, and the halakhic decisors wrote that this is even preferable and more aesthetically commendable. The same applies to wool, or theoretically also to household use without causing suffering, and in various situations this is possible and there is no problem with it.
I wanted to know what the situation is regarding the blue dye? It is produced from the banded dye-murex snail; is there such a possibility there as well?
Thank you.
Answer
You mean aspect, not pan. Pan is the singular of face.
I’m not familiar with the mechanism by which the blue dye is produced, so I don’t know whether there is a problem involved in it (of causing suffering to animals) and whether there is a way around it. I also don’t know to what extent those snails suffer (what their nervous system is like).
I think one should also distinguish between the suffering of death and the suffering of life during the period of raising them. Today, raising cattle and poultry in modern industrial farming is done under harsh conditions (crowding, disease, etc.). The main reason, in my opinion, to avoid animal products is because of the suffering caused during life, not the suffering at the moment of slaughter. After all, every animal is destined to die anyway from the moment it is born, so the very fact that we kill it does not add suffering to it (sometimes it even gives it a better death than in nature). You can think of it as premature euthanasia. In addition, slaughter itself is an act intended to prevent suffering to the animal when it is eaten (something like anesthesia). As for the snail, it does not suffer in life because it is not raised under harsh conditions (to the best of my understanding). Also, it is clear that there are animals whose nervous systems are not developed enough to experience pain like birds and mammals do. According to this, there is no need specifically for the hide of an animal that died a natural death, only that it was raised under proper conditions.