4 Legged Chicken Sparks Ultra-Orthodox Kosher Controversy

Is a chicken born with four legs kosher? Rabbis aren't sure. So a Mea Shearim, Jerusalem chicken slaughter is keeping a four legged bird alive until the rabbis can decide.

 

Preliminary word from the ultra-Orthodox rabbis is that the chicken is not kosher if both sets of legs are linked internally – something that they can only determine after slaughter.

The Vancouver Sun reports the Mea Shearim, Jerusalem slaughterhouse owner keeping the chicken, Yoel Kroish Krausz – an Edah Charedit street captain (i.e., head of the street thugs who riot for the cause) who is also part of a so-called modesty patrol – may sell the chicken to the highest bidder rather than slaughter it because the chicken has drawn "crowds" of haredim who simply want to look at it.

[Hat Tip for the video: Burich.]

Comments

[seymour]

If the legs are tied together, according to local rabbis, the chicken is not kosher. This they said could only be determined by slaughtering the animal.

why

[Aleksandr Sigalov]

According to Deut 15:19-23 its kosher and can be eaten, but not good for sacrifices.

[EileenK]

Why not send the chicken to a sanctuary where kind people can care for it for the rest of its natural life. Here is an example of such a place in the United States.

http://www.farmsanctuary.org/

[anuran]

Very incomplete twinning.

[zibble]

Yummm, double the wigs - I like mine crispy!

[effie]

It's Schneerson. He's come back!

[tonda]

Why did the chicken cross the Rabbi?

No, how about..

Who came first, the chicken or the Rabbi?

Hold on, there's got to be a joke in there somewhere...

[WoolSilkCotton]

Evolution?

[tonda]

So a Rabbi and a 4 legged chicken walk into a bar...

The batrender says, "You can't bring that in here, we only serve kosher!"

And the chicken says. "That's OK, he's just the designated driver."

[anuran]

Come on WSC, you had to have taken embryology and comparative anatomy.

[Adam Neira]

The Psak Din baggage carousel goes a bit slow at times. Maybe the Sanhedrin could have internet access to render psak halachim quickly. Better still let the big decisions be made by certain people and empower the others to have a certain degree of autonomy and nous in working out what they should do in a given situation.

I forget sometimes that that is exactly what I have been doing formally and informally for fifteen years.

IMHO, the chicken is a goner. Four legs or no four legs.

[failed]

i don't get it. where in the taireh does it say anything about leg quantity having an effect on kashrus?

[David]

Why not send the chicken to a sanctuary where kind people can care for it for the rest of its natural life. Here is an example of such a place in the United States.

http://www.farmsanctuary.org/

Posted by: EileenK | June 28, 2011 at 06:27 PM

Because the frumma don't care about the welfare of animals.

[Yissy-CA]

Because the frumma don't care about the welfare of animals.

Posted by: David | June 28, 2011 at 11:28 PM

I can only imagine how they are treating the poor animal. I hope their next life is as a kapporus chicken for child molesters.

[David]

A few questions and comments:

- This chicken has obviously grown to commercial size. How did this happen as normally such deformed animals (in this case parasitic twins) would be euthanised at birth. Were the frumma keeping it as a strange curiosity?

- Good to see all the frumma had plenty of time to drop in to look at it. Its not like they had jobs to go to or anything.

- The makeshift "pen" shown in the video was unrefined and would have been very stressful for the animal, especially with all the frumma coming to look at it. I doubt whether it had clean water or shade and if the purpose of the bucket (which was tipped over) was to contain water, I doubt if the chicken could have reached it.

- This gross disrespect for animals is all further evidence of how far the Charedim have shifted from Judaism.

[David]

Look at the way those dirty frumma kids are toying with the poor animal. It is a disgrace!

[yidandahalf]

The mere fact that these fools are holding a debate over this is surreal. One can only begin to entertain the notion that these religious people enjoy tormenting animals; can there be any other explanation? These are the same people who are so starved for meat they sanction giraffe slaughter. If this is not Dali-esque, I do not know what is. But obviously it's a helluva shtick. They have made billions off it.

[David]

If it is declared "kosher" I wonder if the frumma will hold an auction for it in order to get the maximum price for this this curiosity? (Of course, they know nothing of biology so they don't understand how this happened.)

If declared "treif", what is its fate?

We really are dealing with primitive, disgusting human beings (who falsely present themselves as Jews), sorry to say...

[David]

Correction for my 2:32am post above. The chicken has a parasitic _twin_, not twins. Obviously, one is the parasitic twin and the other is the host. A bit like Charedim and taxpayers...

[C-G]

Doesn't look like an incomplete conjoined twin- the legs are in the correct orientation in the correct body segment. More likely a genetic abnormality that doubled that part of the chicken, resulting in an extra set of legs. It's pretty common in cats that have extra toes (polydactyly). This isn't the first chicken that's been found with extra legs, btw.

Here's a link to an academic paper from 2002 on the subject:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1592811
The authors write that this is an increasingly common abnormality and that it most likely originates in the 4th day of embryonic development and is due to a physical (natural screw-up in how the cells divide)l or chemical cause (all the crap we feed and inject into our livestock that we are too stupid and arrogant to believe is potentially harmful).

Since the frequency of this condition is allegedly increasing, my money is on a chemical cause- which should be the real issue we're worried about.

[george]

http://attorneysdefendingisrael.blogspot.com/2011/06/four-legged-chicken-raises-rare.html

[yidandahalf]

They have managed to breed featherless chickens for animal agriculture (what other reason would there be?). Will the holy rollers declare them treif or ko$her?

[Alter Kocker]

Its a conjoined twin. It should have been euthanized but to these relics from the stone-age it's a revelation. What is it with the joker checking it's rectum? Looking for the mishpacha in there?

[anuran]

Interesting article C-G. Sadly, it is behind a paywall.

[yanek]

I have recently found peace in my life. You might ask in what way? Well, through faith in Yeshua. I have come to believe that He really is Messiah. I share this in hope that some of you will be more open to considering this possibility. Thank You and Shalom

[FormerPostvillian]

David, have you ever lived on a farm?

My guess is your a big city liberal that has no idea about raising food.

- This chicken has obviously grown to commercial size. How did this happen as normally such deformed animals (in this case parasitic twins) would be euthanised at birth. Were the frumma keeping it as a strange curiosity?

This is clearly showing your ignorance. First your right, this was grown to commercial size because that's what farmers do to sell their chickens.

"Euthanized at birth"? Where did you come up with that? Chickens are raised in chicken houses that generally hold 40,000 at a time. Who the hell goes through 40,000 chickens to "euthanize" any abnormal chickens. I don't think I've even heard that word ever used on a farm. I've seen animals "put down", but I've never heard a farmer call a vet to come "euthanize" a animal.

In addition, the farmer who grew this chicken could careless if it's kosher, he sells all his chickens at once to whoever he is contracted with to grow for. If there is a deformed chicken in the batch, he probably doesn't even know it, and if he does, why would he "euthanize" it, then he losses money? He's going to grow it and sell it, and if his buyer doesn't like that chicken, it's not the farmers fault.

And as far as your "stressed" theory because it can't reach it's food and water, that's 100% bullshit. I'm not a chicken therapist, and I doubt if you are either, but a chicken is a chicken and will behave like a chicken whereever you put it.

What makes you think the chicken is "stressed"? Is that a professional opinion or a political one?

Maybe he's happy to still be alive and has just finished eating. My point is, you don't know if the chicken is "stressed" or not, and as someone who has seen millions of live chickens, I can honestly say I have never seen a chicken that looked "stressed". But it's a nice word to use in liberal animal rights circles.

In fact, when these chickens are harvested for production, they are put in cages with many chickens with no food or water from anywhere from a couple hours to several hours to even a day or so while they are transported. This chicken is actually a very lucky chicken to still be alive and being offered food and water.

If the chicken is found not kosher, it will be slaughtered and sold as treif. If you think someone should rescue this chicken and let it live and normal happy life, these chickens are breed as feeder chickens and have a average life span of 8-12 weeks.

From it's size, this chicken is probably 7 weeks old and will be dead of "natural causes" in another couple weeks. So using it for food now, makes complete sense to me.

I would really suggest you spend some time on a farm and learn a little bit more about farming and food production before you start ranting about what you clearly know very little about.

I bet if you had your druthers, you would over regulate the industry, euthanizing chickens and worrying about their food and water, run up food costs, and run farmers out of business because it's not worth it anymore. And that's a reality that's currently happening every day.

I have Amish friends that had to sell their cows because someone like you in Washington decided they were only allowed to use electric hot water heaters in their barns to boil water, instead of the wood stoves they have used for hundreds of years to boil water in their barns.

Is there a difference in boiling water if it was boiled using electricity, or boiled using fire?

When people like you think they are helping the animals, they are really hurting the humans! I will put human life over chicken life any day and everyday, and it's not like the FDA is sworming over these places inspecting them now. If the FDA is satisfied, why aren't you?

Nobody is being abnormally cruel, it's just a cruel world we live in sometimes.

So if you don't like the way they treat chickens, then don't eat them, if enough people care and stop eating them, then the "problem" will take care of itself. But most Americans have no problem with it and eat them everyday, so let us.

Farmers love animals, but they are not pets, they are food and livelihood, sometimes city slickers forget that.

As far as these fumma people in Israel with their four legged chicken, is it Kosher?

In Postville we would occasionally get a three legged chicken, rather then debate it, we would just slaughter it trief and move on, I don't understand why this is such a big deal to begin with.

[FormerPostvillian]

Ok, I'm going to correct myself before anyone else does. After re-reading it, I said they have a average life span of 8-12 weeks. I'm sorry that is incorrect.

Feeder chickens are generally slaughtered at 6-12 weeks depending on the size of the chickens ordered by the slaughter house.

If the chicken is not slaughtered by the 12th week, it will generally not live but a couple more.

But saying 8-12 was wrong, a more accurate range would be 12-14.

[anuran]

FormerPostvillian, this big city Liberal was fully aware of these things. So was his Socialist wife who grew up working in the fields and ran the chicken farm her (public) high school used to pay for textbooks and electricity.

[FormerPostvillian]

That's probably why your not talking out your ass like David was.