A Project Genesis website

Chicken with Milk?

Question

Does the milk/meat restriction apply to chicken? If so why, since chickens don’t suckle their young with milk.

Answer

The reason that Jewish law forbids chicken and milk is due to a rabbinic law, dating back 2000+ years. Because the properties of chicken are so similar to that of meat that rabbis realized that if we would be allowed to eat chicken and milk, we would soon be eating meat and milk.

The rabbis add rules to protect the Torah law, much as society creates guardrails to keep people from going off the road.

Follow-up questions (4)

Question

In today’s world, Parve products are made to look and taste just like meat, yet the rabbis have not put the “chicken-milk” restrictions on these products. Citing this modern phenomenon, can’t this age-old fence-post law be “repealed”?

Answer

Thanks for the question. The reason for the prohibition against eating chicken and milk is because of the similarity of the properties of chicken and beef. Note, for example, how similar chicken franks and beef franks look. Because the reason for the prohibition still exists (the two items are easily interchanged) the rule would still be obligatory.

As a general rule, rules the rabbis mentioned in Talmud stand in effect unless the situation of the day is so radically different that it absolutely no longer applies. An example of that would be the prohibition against taking medications on Shabbat, which the Talmud prohibits lest someone prepare his own medications, thereby violating the prohibition against grinding. Because people do not make their own medications today, many authorities hold that one may take medication on Shabbat, especially if s/he is not feeling well.

Cordially,
Rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt
Dallas, TX

Question

You have many foods in todays market that are actually made of soy or tofu, and are thus, parve – however, they often taste and look just like any meat product. It seems to me that if you apply the Talmudic guidelines which you mentioned, to today’s world, then many of the parve items on the market should be considered meat; yet I can get a parve burger with an OU symbol at the grociery store. Shouldn’t the rabbinic fence encompass these items as well?

Answer

You are correct, and had there been a single authority within Halachic Judaism that was able to issue broad rulings to extend Torah law, tofu may well be forbidden with cheese. But there is not one authority today. So the consensus is to leave things as they are, except if there is a glaring issue that calls for immediate attention (e.g vegetables that often have bugs in their leaves, which need to be supervised to be bug free). And even then rabbis in an area will instruct there constituents to follow a certain practice, but rabbis elsewhere may not. Each community is really independent today.

Be well,
Yaakov

Question

Why is it okay to eat caged birds and their eggs. Isn’t this violating the law against cruelty? Our kosher chickens in Australia are not free range

Answer

Thank you for your question. We are forbidden to cause animals pain. Leaving animals cooped up beyond what is normal (there may be some variation in that definition) is forbidden and wrong. However, the laws of Kosher – eating the animals – relate only to the manner in which the animal was slaughtered and whether or not the blood was removed from its meat. Note that the removal of blood is a sign of respect for the animal: we remove the source of life before consuming it.

So cooping up animals (as in veal, for example) may indeed be against Jewish laws of “tzar ba’alei chaim”, causing cruelty to animals. But the permissibility of consuming that food is independent of that law.

Regards,
Rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt
Dallas, TX

Question

It is possible to buy free range kosher eggs so I do but I am left with eating birds that have suffered. Am I acting out of a animal liberation stance rather than one of Jewish Law? What is the view in the States where Kosher free range chicken is available?

Answer

I think you are right to look for birds that have not suffered to give financial support to that enterprise, but if you can not find a company that produces them (and you can’t start a company yourself) you may still eat the regular chickens. You can reasonably assume that the state regulations only allow discomfort to the animals but not actual pain.

Regards, Y