Chicken Slaughter Ritual Protected By Court Ruling

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — Animal rights activists lost their fight to end to a ritual chicken slaughter in the streets of Brooklyn when a New York court rejected their latest claim, court records show.

The New York Appellate court ruled against the Animal Legal Defense Fund, an animal rights nonprofit that hoped to put an end to the ancient Orthodox ritual Kaporos, on Wednesday, records show.

Roughly 50,000 chickens are killed in the streets of Brooklyn every year as part of an atonement ceremony participants believe will protect their families from harm in the new year to come.

"This is my atonement," participants pray during the ritual. "This fowl will go to death, and I will enter upon a good and long life."

But animal activists argue the ceremony is cruel to the animals — some of which spend days in crowded cages before their throats are slit — and creates unsanitary conditions in the public spaces.

"NYPD provides security, the Department of Sanitation cleans it up," Danny Moss, one of many activists trying to stop the ceremony, told Patch. "Taxpayers are underwriting the cost of this massacre and the city just turns a blind eye."

The activists hoped the court would issue a writ of mandamus that would compel police and city officials to enforce public health and preventing animal cruelty laws, records show.

But the justices ruled against them, arguing the writ is not meant to provide specific outcomes and cannot compel officers in cases of discretion.

"Mandamus is not the appropriate vehicle for the relief sought," the justices wrote. "A writ of mandamus 'is an extraordinary remedy' that is available only in limited circumstances."

Attorney Nora Constance Marino, who represented the animal-rights group, told the New York Law Journal in a statement that her clients would not give up the fight.

“It is disturbing that the city continues to turn a blind eye to 15 laws being violated,” Marino said. “We continue to explore other legal remedies.”

This is not the first unsuccessful bid to put a stop to Kaporos. Brooklyn residents and the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos filed a lawsuit in 2015 that lost several appeals.

Photo courtesy of Leon Neal/Getty Images