Animal rights activists recently discovered hundreds of abandoned chickens in Brooklyn, facing what has been described as an “excruciatingly cruel” fate linked to a ritual associated with an Orthodox Jewish holiday. According to reports from advocates and law enforcement, the initial group of 200 chickens was found in crates inside an abandoned U-Haul on Winthrop Avenue around 5 p.m. on Friday, but only 80 of them were still alive at that point.
Shortly after this discovery, additional chickens were located in another unattended U-Haul about a mile and a half away on St. Johns Place, as per the activists and police.
Rina Deych, who heads the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos, expressed her distress, stating, “This bothers me because it’s so excruciatingly cruel, and I cannot believe it’s still being done in this day and age.” She detailed that the chickens were crammed into crates, with 10 to 18 birds per crate, stacked on top of each other and left for days, resulting in many deaths.
Authorities are now investigating these disturbing findings.
Deych, who identifies as Jewish, explained that only a small segment of Orthodox Jews engage in Kaporos, a pre-Yom Kippur ritual where a person swings a chicken—usually a chick—above their head by its wings. “The slaughterer then turns the chicken upside down and slices its throat. These are baby chickens,” she added.
According to her, those participating in the ritual believe it serves as a symbolic transfer of sins to the chicken, a practice she has been campaigning against for years. John Di Leonardo, president of the Humane Long Island Anthrozoologist & Wildlife Rehabilitator, argued that the ritual isn’t even a religious practice, noting, “People know about Santeria, they know about Voodoo, but they don’t know about this much larger sacrifice happening in their backyard.”
Community members expressed their disgust and sorrow regarding the situation. “The smell is so bad that I can’t even open my windows,” lamented Pamela Richards, 62, a nearby resident. “I looked out my window and there was a chicken walking on top of the truck this morning. Some of the chickens are alive and some are dead. I don’t know what to do.”
Another neighbor, Eddie Rosenberg, described the scene as “horrific.” He remarked, “This is not a way to treat any living organism, it’s horrific. I know that this is for a religious ceremony, but this is animal cruelty. The truck was covered by a tarp earlier; they were trying to hide their crimes.”
Robert Lapointe, who resides just behind where the U-Haul was parked, expressed shock upon learning about the discovery. “I’ve never seen a truck full of dead chickens before,” he said, reflecting on his 35 years of living in Brooklyn.
