From a distance, kapporos sites look like street festivals. But up close, they are horrifying makeshift slaughterhouses on public streets. This ritual, which is practiced primarily by Hasidic Jewish communities, involves the rough handling (waving chickens over one's head) and slaughter of chickens in a sacrificial atonement ceremony prior to the holiday of Yom Kippur.

Just in Brooklyn, New York, more than 50,000 chickens are trucked in for this ritual. They languish without food and water, stacked in cramped, filthy transport crates on public streets for hours. Many don't even survive until the time when they would be slaughtered.

The use of live chickens for this ritual has been widely criticized by rabbis representing a wide range of Jewish observance. Most Jewish communities that still practice kapporos do so using money, instead of live chickens; the money—instead of meat—is then donated to tzedakah (charity). Using money is a religiously approved option and eliminates all the gratuitous cruelty associated with this ceremony.

for more info and to send a letter to the rabbis in charge: getactive.peta.org/campaign/kapporos