Posted on 10/03/2021 5:00:35 AM PDT by mylife
JTA — Impossible Foods, the plant-based meat company, is releasing a long-awaited new product — but unlike the wildly popular Impossible Burger, it won’t be certified kosher.
The largest and most influential certifier of kosher products in the world has declined to endorse Impossible Pork, even though nothing about its ingredients or preparation conflicts with Jewish dietary laws.
“The Impossible Pork, we didn’t give an ‘OU’ to it, not because it wasn’t kosher per se,” said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the CEO of the Orthodox Union’s kosher division. “It may indeed be completely in terms of its ingredients: If it’s completely plant-derived, it’s kosher. Just in terms of sensitivities to the consumer … it didn’t get it.”
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofisrael.com ...
I wonder about Halal with these fake meats.
How about if the farmers harvest the plants with really sharp knives?
Some Jewish people won’t allow non-dairy margarine on a table with meat just because it “looks like butter”
It just wasn't the same.
Are these liberal Jews or *real* Jews?
If the plant self-identifies as pork, you have to treat it as pork. Otherwise you offend the plant.
Old school first generation conservative Jews.
It has to do with confusion and “slippery slope” arguments historically. The same reason they can’t have chicken with dairy, even though it should only apply to mammalian meat.
Who knows what’s in this stuff. . .who knows what they are going to be putting in it in the future. Could be the next “jab”.
I guess this answers the question, the premise of a story in Analog many years ago, of what would happen if a pig was genetically modified to have 4 stomachs and chew a cud.
Cloven hooves, chews a cud, the definition of Kosher in Leviticus.
They could likely solve the issue by calling the product by a less “in your face” name. People would readily get to know what the product tastes lie.
Yet lox and cream cheese are OK?
Such as?
Vegan Pork? Nah... Vegans are always in your face.
Maybe extrude it with holes to give a visual cue that it didn’t come from a pig? Swiss Pork?
Yes. Fish is alright with dairy as long as it has scales of course! All seems like insanely primitive and arbitrary rules to me.
Bacon bits are kosher, bacon flavored pringles are kosher.
“Just in terms of sensitivities to the consumer . . .”
Nothing like a solid-as-a-rock religious law.
Personally keeping Kosher is one thing, but now, official stamp-certified “Kosher” means nothing more than a feeling.
Yes. Fish is alright with dairy as long as it has scales of course! All seems like insanely primitive and arbitrary rules to me.
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Those “insanely primitive and arbitrary rules” are based on historical learned observations that shellfish subsistence largely on the decaying flesh of animals while pigs will eat anything and as a result can carry parasites such as trichinosis.
My own opinion:
I think the naturalness of foods should also be considered.
Margerine, vegetable oils, corn syrup, food colorants, artificial flavorings, and fake meats are all things that don’t exist in nature. I think a case could be made that since they don’t exist naturally, they cannot be kosher.
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