Courtesy: Kosher food approval certification
Gelatin
Gelatin is hydrolysed collagen, 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.