Tza’ar Ba’alei Ḥayim

There is a mitzva to treat animals with compassion, and it is prohibited to cause them unnecessary suffering. At the same time, people may use animals for labor and food: donkeys and mules for carrying loads, oxen for plowing, horses and camels for riding, and animals for their meat. The Torah goes further still, commanding us to offer animal and bird sacrifices, including the scapegoat and the heifer whose neck is broken. This is what the Sages meant when they said that animals were created to serve human beings (Kiddushin 82a; Sanhedrin 108a). Included in this is their use for food: just as animals may eat plants, human beings may eat animals.

These two values must therefore be balanced. On the one hand, human needs take precedence over the needs of animals. On the other, one must make every effort, as far as possible, to avoid causing animals to suffer. Thus, even when Bnei Noaḥ were permitted to eat meat, the Torah forbade the cruelty of eating a limb from a living animal.

In practice, when a human need conflicts with the duty to prevent animal suffering, one weighs how essential the human benefit is against the suffering caused to the animal. Eating meat, for example, is a very significant human need, and sheḥita causes only mild suffering (see below, 18:3); therefore one may slaughter animals for food. But when the human need is less essential, or when meeting it would cause the animal great suffering, the question becomes more complex. Halakha addresses such cases by weighing three fundamental principles:

The first principle concerns the degree of suffering: mild, ordinary, great, and extreme. The greater the suffering, the more serious the matter becomes; only rarely, for a truly essential need, is there room to be lenient.

The second principle concerns the animal itself. The more cognitively complex the animal, the more intensely it can experience suffering, and the more careful one must be not to cause it pain. This level of complexity is determined primarily by the animal’s brain and nervous system. Mammals, such as dogs, livestock, monkeys, and dolphins, have relatively complex brains and nervous systems: they visibly experience distress and joy, can be trained to some extent, and display maternal care, as a mother recognizes her offspring and tends to them with compassion. Even among mammals there are differences. A dog, for example, is more cognitively complex than a sheep; it can express certain emotions more clearly, and its suffering is greater when it is hurt. Below mammals are birds, followed by reptiles such as lizards, and then fish. Fish generally do not care for their young; indeed, only a few minutes after giving birth to small fry, a female fish may devour many of them without any sign of hesitation. Below fish are insects.

The third principle is that the more an animal serves human beings, the greater the compassion and fairness with which it must be treated. The Torah therefore commands us to help unload a donkey that has collapsed under its burden (below, section 2) and forbids one to muzzle an animal while it is working with food, thereby preventing it from eating (below, section 3). Accordingly, particular compassion should be shown to domesticated animals, such as cows, goats, sheep, and chickens. The same applies to dogs, which help guard the home, and cats, which rid the house of snakes and mice.

In summary: Ideally, one should not cause any living creature to suffer, even the lowest forms of animal life, as it is written (Tehilim 145:9): “His compassion extends to all His works” (see Bava Metzia 85a). When a person genuinely needs to cause animals suffering, each case must be weighed in light of the three principles explained above.¹