Courtesy: Kosher food approval certification
Kosher foods are foods that conform to the Jewish dietary regulations of kashrut (dietary law), the Jewish dietary law is primarily derived from Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14:1-21. Foods that may be consumed according to halakha (Jewish law) are termed kosher (/ˈkoʊʃər/) in English, from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term kashér (כָּשֵׁר), meaning “fit” (in this context, fit for consumption). Foods that are not in accordance with Jewish law are called treif (/treɪf/; Yiddish: טרײף, derived from Hebrew: טְרֵפָה trāfáh) meaning “torn
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 sherets (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.