Kosher food approval certification

Courtesy: Kosher food approval certification

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.

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 (גלאַט), 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

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)

The gift of the foreleg, cheeks and maw of a kosher-slaughtered animal to a kohen is a positive commandment in the Hebrew Bible. Some rabbinic opinions maintain that consumption of the animal is forbidden before these gifts are given, though the accepted halacha is to permit this.

Furthermore, the actual foreleg, cheeks and maw of all kosher-slaughtered beef are forbidden to a non-kohen unless the kohen permits

One of the main biblical food laws forbids consuming blood on account of “the life [being] in the blood”. This ban and reason are listed in the Noahide Laws and twice in Book of Leviticus as well as in Deuteronomy.

Classical rabbis argued that only if it is impossible to remove every drop of blood, the prohibition against consuming blood was impractical, and there should be rare exceptions.

They claimed that consuming the blood that remained on the inside of meat (as opposed to the blood on the surface of it, dripping from it, or housed within the veins) should be permitted and that the blood of fish and locusts could also be consumed.

To comply with this prohibition, a number of preparation techniques became practiced within traditional Judaism. The main technique, known as meliḥah, involves the meat being soaked in water for about half an hour, which opens pores.

After this, the meat is placed on a slanted board or in a wicker basket, and is thickly covered with salt on each side, then left for between 20 minutes and one hour. The salt covering draws blood from the meat by osmosis, and the salt must be subsequently removed from the meat (usually by trying to shake most of it off and then washing the meat twice) to complete the extraction of the blood. The type of salt used in the process is known as kosher salt.

Meliḥah is not sufficient to extract blood from the liver, lungs, heart, and certain other internal organs, since they naturally contain a high density of blood, and therefore these organs are usually removed before the rest of the meat is salted. Roasting, on the other hand, discharges blood while cooking, and is the usual treatment given to these organs. It is also an acceptable method for removing blood from all meat.