There’s a new commercial for hot dogs I’ve only caught part of (likely it’s for Hebrew National brand) that shows one of those posters of a steer marked off with lines into the usual butchering secions. The sections in the front half are colored one hue, the back half in a different one.
It’s at least implied that their hot dogs are only made with meat from the front half.
So…is this just a marketing ploy, or are there kosher rules about not using the back half of a steer?
Does it only apply with hot dogs for some reason and, say, rump roasts are okay?
Cause I’m finding it hard to believe that Jews have been throwing away half of every steer.
Or maybe they sell that part to us Gentiles.
Hey! A question about Kosherness and I didn’t post it on the Sabbath!
There’s a nerve in mammals called the sciatic nerve, which runs down the lower back, through the butt and into the legs. Under kosher rules, you’re not allowed to eat the sciatic nerve or the blood vessels that go along with it (because, in Judaism, there’s a story that Jacob, the father of the Israelite tribes, wrestled with an angel, who wounded his sciatic nerve). It’s possible to remove it when you’re butchering, but it’s time consuming, and usually isn’t done, so kosher butchers usually just sell meat from the front half of the animal.
In fact, the traditional, rabbi-approved method for doing it is almost a lost art now, with only a very few butchers still knowing how. So even if a modern kosher butcher decided it was worth the time and effort, he probably still couldn’t do it.
The usual practice is to just split the animal with a non-kosher butcher. In fact, in some places in the world where Muslims and Jews get along, you’ll see a kosher butcher partnered with and right next door to a halal butcher, since Muslims have similar dietary laws to Jews, but don’t have a restriction on the sciatic nerve.
As will be obvious, I know nothing about butchering animals, but couldn’t that process be automated? (Or would that be non-kosher too? I also know nothing about being kosher.)
No doubt. The actual cause-effect relationship is a little unclear though.
Jacob threw his back out while wrestling an angel; therefore, it is forbidden for any of Jacob’s descendants to eat the equivalent body parts of any food animal. This is not an intuitive connection to the uninformed observer.
Jacob beat the angel in a wrestling match, getting a nerve injury while doing it. So Jews don’t eat the sciatic nerve in order to commemorate Jacob’s victory over the angel.
Cattle aren’t necessarily a uniform size like pigs and chickens which have been bred to be a uniform size. At least here in the United States. The lack of uniform size in cattle makes it difficult to fully automate the processing.
That’s very interesting, thanks. You do, indeed, learn something every day.
Actually, what I find sort of amazing is that I’d never heard anything at all about this splitting the body before. I mean, I’m not a Jew, but by osmosis I know that pigs and seafood are out, that you don’t eat meat and cheese at the same meal, and other odd bits and pieces about the rules of eating.
With beef being such a major part of the American diet, it just seems like I should have come across this rule before now.
It would be very bad business indeed to waste half of every slaughtered animal. The hindquarters go to the non-kosher side of the slaughterhouse.
In fact, AFAIK, every kosher slaughterhouse, whether for cattle (beef, lamb, goat, etc.) or poultry, has a non-kosher side. This is because there are certain requirements on the condition of the internal organs in order for the carcass to be considered kosher. If they fail this inspection, they may still be perfectly acceptable by USDA standards, and are passed on for non-kosher processing.
I think this was pretty clear in the post near the beginning of the thread.
If they are made from kosher cuts of beef, it most certainly can be. http://www.kosher.com/store/kosher-meat/kosher-beef/ground-beef
You just have to buy it from a kosher butcher. There’s no reason any cut of beef can be guaranteed to be kosher unless it’s prepared by kosher butcher.
