kosher foods

Kosher foods are foods that conform to the Jewish dietary regulations of ''kashrut'' (dietary law). The laws of ''kashrut'' apply to food derived from living creatures and kosher foods are restricted to certain types of mammals, birds and fish meeting specific criteria; the flesh of any animals that do not meet these criteria is forbidden by the dietary laws. Furthermore, kosher mammals and birds must be slaughtered according to a process known as and their blood may never be consumed and must be removed from the meat by a process of salting and soaking in water for the meat to be permissible for use. All plant-based products, including fruits, vegetables, grains, herbs and spices, are intrinsically kosher, although certain produce grown in the Land of Israel is subjected to other requirements, such as tithing, before it may be consumed.

Kosher food also distinguishes between meat and dairy products. Meat products are those that comprise or contain kosher meat, such as beef, lamb or venison, kosher poultry such as chicken, goose, duck or turkey, or derivatives of meat, such as animal gelatin; non-animal products that are processed on equipment used for meat or meat-derived products are also considered to belong to this category. Dairy products are those which contain milk or any derivatives such as butter or cheese; non-dairy products that are processed on equipment used for milk or milk-derived products are also considered as belonging to this category. Because of this categorization, meat and milk or their respective derivatives are not combined in kosher foods, and separate equipment for the storage and preparation of meat-based and dairy-based foods is used in order for food to be considered kosher.

Another category of kosher food, called contains neither meat, milk nor their derivatives; they include foods such as fish, eggs from permitted birds, produce, grains, fruit and other edible plants. They remain pareve if they are not mixed with or processed using equipment that is used for any meat or dairy products.

Because of the complexities of modern food manufacturing, kashrut agencies supervise or inspect the production of kosher foods and provide a certification called a hechsher to verify for kosher food consumers that it has been produced in accordance with Jewish law.

Jewish dietary law is primarily derived from Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14:1-21. Foods that may be consumed according to Jewish religious law are termed ''kosher'' () in English, from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term ''kashér'' (), meaning "fit" (in this context, fit for consumption). Foods that are not in accordance with Jewish law are called '' treif'' (; yi, טרײף, derived from he, טְרֵפָה ''trāfáh'') meaning "torn."

Permitted and forbidden animals

The Torah permits eating only those land animals that chew their cud and have cloven hooves. Four animals, the hare, hyrax, camel, and pig, are specifically identified as being forbidden because they possess only one of the above characteristics: the hare, hyrax and camel are hindgut fermenters and chew their cud but do not have cloven hooves, while the pig has a cloven hoof but does not chew its cud.

The Torah lists winged creatures that may not be consumed, mainly birds of prey, fish-eating water-birds, and bats. Certain domesticated fowl can be eaten, such as chicken, geese, quail, dove, and turkey.

The Torah permits only those fish which have both fins and scales to be eaten. Monkfish is not considered kosher. To comply with kosher requirements, a fish must have fins and easily detached scales; the scales of a sturgeon are extremely hard to remove, hence it is non-kosher. Other seafood considered non-kosher includes shellfish like clams, oysters, crabs and shrimp. There is also a risk of products like seaweed and kelp being contaminated by microscopic, non-kosher crustaceans.

The Torah forbids two types of (creeping things):
* Earth crawlers, e.g. mouse, lizard
* Flying creeping things, with four exceptions: Two types of locust, the cricket, and the grasshopper (translations of the species names vary).

Animal products

In addition to meat, products of forbidden species and from unhealthy animals were banned by the Talmudic writers. This included eggs (including fish roe), as well as derived products such as jelly, but did not include materials merely "manufactured" or "gathered" by animals, such as honey (although, in the case of honey from animals other than bees, there was a difference of opinion among the ancient writers).

According to the rabbinical writers, eggs from ritually pure animals would always be prolate ("pointy") at one end and oblate ("rounded") at the other, helping to reduce uncertainty about whether consumption was permitted or not.

Dairy products

The classic rabbinical writers imply that milk from an animal whose meat is kosher is also kosher. As animals are considered non-kosher if they are discovered to have been diseased after being slaughtered, this could make their milk retroactively non-kosher.

However, by adhering to the principle that the majority case overrules the exception, Jewish tradition continues to regard such milk as kosher, since statistically it is true that most animals producing such milk are kosher; the same principle is not applied to the possibility of consuming meat from an animal that has not been checked for disease.

Rabbi Hershel Schachter argued that with modern dairy-farm equipment, milk from the minority of non-kosher cows is invariably mixed with that of the majority of kosher cows, thus invalidating the permissibility of consuming milk from a large dairy operation. Many leading rabbis, however, rule milk permissible, as do major ''kashrut'' authorities.

Human breast milk

Breast milk from a woman is permitted.Maimonides, Mishneh Torah ''Ma'akalot Asurot'':3; ''Ketubot'' 60a; ''Bekorot'' 6a; ''Hullin'' 112b; Jacob ben Asher, ''Yoreh De'ah'', 81 However, authorities assert breast milk may be consumed directly from the breasts only by children younger than four (five if the child is ill), and children older than two were only permitted to continue to suckle if they had not stopped doing so for more than three consecutive days.

Cheese

The situation of cheese is complicated as hard cheese usually involves rennet, an enzyme that splits milk into curds and whey.

Most forms of rennet were formerly derived from the stomach linings of animals, but currently rennet is most often made recombinantly in microbes (though most European cheese still uses animal rennet).

Because the rennet could be derived from animals, it could potentially be non-kosher. Only rennet made recombinantly, or from the stomachs of kosher animals, if they have been slaughtered according to the laws of ''kashrut'', is kosher.

According to the Shulchan Aruch, a rabbinic decree (called ''gevinat akum'') prohibits all cheese made by non-Jews without Jewish supervision, even if its ingredients are all kosher, because very frequently the rennet in cheese is not kosher.. Rabbeinu Tam and some of the geonim suggested that this decree does not apply in a location where cheese is commonly made with only kosher ingredients, a position that was practiced in communities in Narbonne and Italy.

Many contemporary Orthodox authorities do not follow this ruling, and hold that cheese requires formal ''kashrut'' certification to be kosher; some even argue this is necessary for cheese made with non-animal rennet. However, some such as Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik ate generic cheeses without certification. Isaac Klein's ''tshuva'' authorized the use of cheese made from non-kosher rennet, and this is widely practised by observant Conservative Jews and Conservative institutions.

Eggs

The eggs of kosher birds are kosher. Eggs are considered '' pareve'' despite being an animal product.

Blood found in eggs

Occasionally blood spots are found within an egg, which can affect the kosher status of the egg. The ''halacha'' varies depending on whether or not there is a possibility of the egg being fertilized.

If the egg may have been fertilized, the Rishonim and Shulchan Aruch suggest a complex set of rules for determining whether the egg may be eaten; among these rules, if blood appears on the yolk, the entire egg is forbidden.
To avoid the complexity of these rules, R' Moshe Isserles records a custom not to eat any such eggs with blood spots.

If the egg was definitely unfertilized (laid by a hen kept isolated from roosters), many authorities (including Rabbis Moshe Feinstein and Ovadiah Yosef) rule that one may remove the blood spot and then eat the remainder of the egg. This is the case nowadays, when battery eggs form the majority of available produce.

Regarding the question of whether one must check an egg for blood spots, the Shulchan Aruch rules that one may eat hard-boiled eggs where checking is impossible.Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Deah 66:8 R' Moshe Isserles adds that checking is not required, but that a custom exists to check eggs if they are cracked during the daytime (when blood could be seen).

A contemporary Ashkenazi authority writes that while "''halacha'' does not require" checking supermarket-bought eggs, "there is a '' minhag''" to do so. Nevertheless, eggs are not checked in commercial settings where doing so would be expensive.

Gelatin

Gelatin is hydrolysed collagen,Geliko Kosher Gelatin
Functional & Nutraceutical Properties. the main protein in animal connective tissue, and therefore could potentially come from a non-kosher source, such as pig skin. Gelatin has historically been a prominent source of glue, finding uses from musical instruments to embroidery, one of the main historic emulsions used in cosmetics and in photographic film, the main coating given to medical capsule pills, and a form of food including jelly, trifle, and marshmallows; the status of gelatin in ''kashrut'' is consequently fairly controversial.

Due to the ambiguity over the source of individual items derived from gelatin, many Orthodox rabbis regard it as generally being non-kosher. However, Conservative rabbis and several prominent Orthodox rabbis, including Chaim Ozer Grodzinski and Ovadia Yosef—the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel—argue that gelatin has undergone such total chemical change and processing that it should not count as meat, and therefore would be kosher.

Technically, gelatin is produced by separating the three strands in each collagen fiber's triple helix by boiling collagen in water. Rabbi Dr. David Sheinkopf, author of ''Gelatin in Jewish Law'' (Bloch 1982) and ''Issues in Jewish Dietary Laws'' (Ktav 1998), has published in-depth studies of the kosher uses of gelatin, as well as carmine and ''kitniyot''.

One of the main methods of avoiding non-kosher gelatin is to substitute gelatin-like materials in its place; substances with a similar chemical behaviour include food starch from tapioca, chemically modified pectins, and carrageenan combined with certain vegetable gums— guar gum, locust bean gum, xanthan gum, gum acacia, agar, and others. Although gelatin is used for several purposes by a wide variety of manufacturers, it has started to be replaced with these substitutes in a number of products, due to the use of gelatin also being a significant concern to vegans and vegetarians.

Today manufacturers are producing gelatin from the skins of kosher fish, circumventing many of these problems.

Ritual slaughter

One of the few dietary laws appearing in Exodus prohibits eating the meat from animals that have been "torn by beasts"; a related law appears in Deuteronomy, prohibiting the consumption of anything that has died from natural causes.

Some have claimed that the Book of Ezekiel implies that the rules about animals that die of natural causes, or are "torn by beasts", were adhered to only by the priests, and were intended only for them; the implication that they did not apply to, and were not upheld by, ordinary Israelites was noticed by the classical rabbis, who declared "the prophet Elijah shall some day explain this problematic passage".

Traditional Jewish thought has expressed the view that all meat must come from animals that have been slaughtered according to Jewish law. These guidelines require the animal be killed by a single cut across the throat to a precise depth, severing both carotid arteries, both jugular veins, both vagus nerves, the trachea and the esophagus, no higher than the epiglottis and no lower than where cilia begin inside the trachea, causing the animal to bleed to death.

Some believe that this ensures the animal dies instantly without unnecessary suffering, but many animal-rights activists view the process as cruel, claiming that the animal may not lose consciousness immediately, and activists have called for it to be banned. Animal science researcher Temple Grandin has stated that kosher slaughter, no matter how well performed, does not result in an instantaneous loss of consciousness, whereas stunning properly with a captive bolt is instantaneous. She gives various times for loss of consciousness via kosher ritual slaughter, ranging from 15 to 90 seconds depending on measurement type and individual kosher slaughterhouse.

To avoid tearing, and to ensure the cut is thorough, such slaughter is usually performed by a trained individual, with a large, razor-sharp knife, which is checked before each slaughter to ensure that it has no irregularities (such as nicks and dents); if irregularities are discovered, or the cut is too shallow, the meat is deemed non-kosher.

Rabbis usually require the slaughterer, known within Judaism as a '' shochet'', to also be a pious Jew of good character and an observer of the Shabbat. In smaller communities, the ''shochet'' was often the town rabbi, or a rabbi from a local synagogue, but large slaughterhouses usually employ a full-time ''shochet'' if they intend to sell kosher meat.

The Talmud, and later Jewish authorities, also prohibit the consumption of meat from animals who were slaughtered despite being in the process of dying from disease. This is not based on concern for the health of the eater, instead being an extension of the rules banning the meat from animals torn by beasts, and animals that die from natural causes.Jacob ben Asher, ''Yoreh De'ah'' 29-60

To comply with this Talmudic injunction against eating diseased animals, Orthodox Jews usually require that the corpses of freshly slaughtered animals be thoroughly inspected.

There are 70 different traditional checks for irregularities and growths; for example, there are checks to ensure that the lungs have absolutely no scars, which might have been caused by an inflammation. If these checks are passed, the meat is then termed ''glatt'' (), the Yiddish word meaning 'smooth'.

An unusual situation is created when a live fetus is removed from a kosher slaughtered animal. The fetus is called a Ben pekuah and takes the status of the mother, so that if the mother was kosher, the fetus is kosher even if there were problems with the slaughter.

Compromises in countries with animal-cruelty laws that prohibit such practices involve stunning the animal to lessen the suffering that occurs while the animal bleeds to death. However, the use of electric shocks to daze the animal is often not accepted by some markets as producing meat that is kosher.

Forbidden parts of a slaughtered animal

As forbidden fats, tendons, blood vessels and the ''gid hanasheh'' (sciatic nerve) must be removed, more difficult in the rear-quarters, often only cuts of meat from the forequarters are available.

Leviticus prohibits the eating of certain types of fat ('' chelev'') from sacrificial land animals (cattle, sheep, and goats), since the fat is the portion of the meat exclusively allocated to God (by burning it on the altar).

Foreleg, cheeks and maw

The gift of the foreleg, cheeks and maw of a kosher-slaughtered animal to a ''kohen'' is a positive commandment in the Hebrew Bible

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