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Just for the record: Pig Hooves are not kosher; you cannot eat them.
Sorry for looking like a mod, but I had an important point to make.
Just in case there’s any doubt about the joking going around here…
I was under the impression that is ILLEGAL for there to be anything other then cows milk and thats why we can drink cholov stam. And yes, it is heavily regulated in a way we can trust because of all the severe milk allergies they MUST be 100% careful about what goes in the milk.
Also, no one milks pigs, so the example is just ridiculous. (and i looked that up)
However, there is this Indian (hindu) guy at work, and he told me they dont have milk/dairy in their home, because when cows are getting milked, blood can get in the milk (from the utters being sore). So therefore they are makpid not to bring any dairy into their house. I was wondering why the Jews dont care about that? Batul BaShishim??
Anyways you probably are just sensitive to the heavier lactose/ creamy non CY milk… or psychologically you feel bad.
LOL. (You can’t eat them anyway, they’re like nails. I think.)
Milk from a kosher animal which has treif status is no less a transgression than pig’s, horse’s or camel’s milk, and USDA is totally uninterested in the presence, abundance, or even totality of milk from such a cow in the carton we buy. Of course under proper conditions it is nullified – so is pig’s milk, so is blood – and of course halachot bitul are very serious stuff and denying them is apikores, and in addition there are other leniencies, such as relying on the majority. This does not mean people should make light of those who point out problems, especially given that, as others pointed out, there are so many CY products available.
daniela,
relying on majority isnt a leniency it is basic halacha.
(Of course if a majority of milking cows are in fact treifa that is another story)
Ubiquitin,
I believe daniela means relying on only a majority without Shishim. More than 1 in every 60 milk cows is a treifa. Therefore l’chatchila all milk in the USA is arguably treif.
Ubiquitin, Benignuman, correct me if I am wrong but I believe that a kosher liquid mixed with a nonkosher liquid has a much less stringent rule than the nonkosher unwanted taste being nullified in 60. I believe it is 1/6. Also, I believe I heard we do not have to worry that perhaps our particular container that we bought in the store, is nonkosher due to unfortunate coincidences which caused it to have a percentage of the nonkosher liquid larger than 1/6 (thus no bitul): given that the milk for sale is intended to be mixed at the processing plant e.g. for pasteurization, as long as the majority of USDA milk is kosher enough, we do not have to worry about a specific container. Again please correct me if I am wrong.
Many cows get their stomach punctured, it is a routine practice, but there is a high turnover of milking cows and young cows have not yet needed the procedure.
daniela, Not quite when combining liquids we always need 60 times (if they are the same min (regardless of how you define “min” treif and kosher cow milk is certainly the same min) then it is “only” derabanan while deoraisa would be batul by simple majority)
With milk majority we rely on is different. How can we ever drink milk, maybe the cow is a treifa? The gemara addresses this and says Most cows (simple majority not 60 times) are not treifa. Therfore each cow that is milked can be assumed to not be a treifa.
(There are those such as R’ Hershel sShachter who hold this rov to no longer hold true in the US and therfore avoid milk altogether. Others such as R’ Reisman hold this is an issue among cows in general due to their eating habits/ various treatments they undergo, however cy cows are fed a different diet and thus are kosher. R’ Belsky holds this isnt an issue at all)
(There are those such as R’ Hershel Shachter who hold this rov to no longer hold true in the US and therfore avoid milk altogether
Is there anyone besides him?
Thank you a lot ubiquitin. Thus the treifa mixing is actually even worse than mixing with camel’s milk or blood, if I understand correctly. Not to mention that the latter are a remote possibility and very likely less than 1/60, while not so the treifa. I have heard many or most cows have the procedure at some point. Perhaps there is a majority of kosher cows in industrial farming, but it is not obviously nor overwhelmingly so.
DY
I dont think so, and even he holds there are tzdadim lehakel. Keep in mind he is one of the OU’s poskim and would obviously leave if he felt he was certifying treif milk.
R’ Reisman on the other hand is more chamur in this sense as he really feels there is little room for heter in regard to chalav stam due to this concern. i have heard him on more than one occasion viewing it as triefus gamur due to the above mentioned concern.He has said to avoid keilim as well for this reason.
Although again R’ Belsky holds it is fine. I dont know the details of the metzeius.
PBA: Actually, pig hooves are Muttar to eat.
Daniela: 1/6th is a strange Heter that is brought down in a small minority of Rishonim and is only relevant to being Mevatel Stam Yeinam. (Well, it has a few others Halachos having to do with wine but that’s not Bittul, it’s something else entirely.)
Daniela,
i’m not sure what you mean by “worse.” If you had milk that you KNEW was froma treifa cow (say you shechted it right after milking it and found it to be a treifa) then it would be treated a any treif milk and requires 60 to be mevatel.
If you dont know the status of the cow (which presumably is usually the case as when you walk into your local grocery and pick up some milk there is no way you can know what the status of the cow is) The gemara says that rov cows are not treifa. Therfore every living cow can be assumed to be a member of that rov and all milk is Kosher.
This is the halacha as codified and according to most poskim is equally applicable today.
Ubiq,
The problem with that svara nowadays is that milk is no longer bottled (or cartonned) at the cow. Rather all the milk is gathered together in vats and then cartonned. Therefore if Treifos are known to be greater than 1.66% (the stomach piercing procedure alone effects approx. 14% of milk cows and is recorded cow by cow on farms), their milk will not be battul and and the milk will be treif (m’drabbanan).
The only way to get out of this problem is to hold like Rabbi Belsky that the stomach piercing procedure does not render the cow a treifa altogether.
Thank you a lot ubiquitin and Sam2.
If the cow is shechted and found treif, then can it still be mevatel by intentionally mixing it?
I maybe used the wrong word “worse”, I meant to say that standard tests and chemical analysis is a good method for detecting blood (actually I think there is a max concentration allowed for that), I think it is not as good in detecting a mixture of milks from different species, especially if the nonkosher animal’s milk is not extracted mechanically and there are few cells and few species-specifics bacteria in the milk (yet perhaps it’s good enough, say, could a 1% threshold be detected? I am not sure about it), but in regards to finding traifa milk it seems to me it’s useless.
Daniela,
You cannot be mevatel issuer l’chatchila.
Daniela: Absolutely not. That’s Ein Mevatlin Issur Lechatchilah. If it was mixed already and was Battul B’shishim, then it’s okay.
The only way to get out of this problem is to hold like Rabbi Belsky
Or, to hold that since the rov already paskens on the milk before it mixes, the percentage is irrelevant.
Sam2
The Torah prohibits only the meat of unkosher animals, but not the bones, horns or hoofs.
The Sages, however, forbade any bones, horns or hoofs which contain moisture. According to this, food made from unkosher bones is forbidden, unless the bones were completely dry.
From Ohr dot edu
WIY: I don’t think that’s correct. If the bones have marrow in them, then the marrow is Assur Min Hatorah. So pig hooves would be Kosher to eat (of course, they’re not really edible, but that’s a technical issue). Do they source this Issur?
Thank you to both, I thought so, somehow I misunderstood ubiquitin’s post the first time I read it, my apologies.
DY,
The farms keep records of which cows have had the procedure. Therefore if you don’t hold like Rabbi Belsky, there is no way out.
Your solution might help for Rabbi Shachter’s issue but it won’t help for Rabbi Reisman’s.
I hear. My solution isn’t necessary for R’ Schachter’s problem, though, since rov isn’t governed by statistics (another way of saying what ubiquitin said).
R’ Chatzkel Roth is mattir even though the procedure makes treifos. I’ll try to research why.
Since there’s no way to know from which cows a particular container of Guida’s milk came from, it might be muttar based on rov, even though the company had records.
Or, to say it a bit differently, we don’t know the status of the cow at the time of milking (even though the company does know).
Sam2: Why would pig’s hooves be muttar to eat?
Torah: Hooves, horns, and bones aren’t food and as thus aren’t Treif if you want to attempt to shred your esophagus, stomach, and/or intestines open by eating them. Skin isn’t Treif either (a pig’s might be, actually, I’m not sure) unless you fry/prepare it in some way to make it edible, in which case it becomes Treif retroactively. (At least, I seem to recall a random Rashi implying that if you prepare it it becomes Treif but I don’t quite remember where.)
Lemme wonder this, with the caveat that I’m feeling a bit behind the curve here.
So there is a rov that beheimos are not treifos. And that is why we can drink milk usually, and why we don’t need to check if an animal is a treifah in all of the possible ways before we eat it.
But do we ever say that the rov is a super strong 60-1 rov? And if it was, you’d expect some discourse on it with R’ Meir who doesn’t hold of rov except in super majority cases.
So forget that we know about the stomach stapling affecting 14%–how can you drink any milk anyway since there will likely be more than a shishim, if you mix it together with each other? And ??? ????, R’ Yehuda holds ??? ????? ????? ???? ?? ????, so would he hold that if you mix a bunch of cows milks together that you can’t drink it? And how do we mix meat from different cows together, if we only know that they are kosher by rov?
Don’t you kind of need to say like DY referenced above that the rov already paskened and we’re done. Unless you say something like that the milk is never separate since it all goes straight into the tank, but then won’t CY milk have the same problem because of the normal miut treifos?
DY
I think the issue is the metzius MAY have changed. The gemara assumes rov cows are kosher. I don’t know remember the technical details but R’ shechter’s holds this to no longer be true and that rov cows are treifa. Therfore every cow would be assumed to be a treifa unless checked, thus making all milk treif unless came from a cow that was checked and found to be kasher.
PBA: That is precisely what Rav Schachter’s issue is and why he no longer drinks milk. All the milk is mixed so you can’t say Rov anymore, and there’s not enough for Shishim. The mixing meat isn’t an issue, though, because we check for Treifos that could have occurred and have a right to assume that the rest don’t exist.
Pba, the rov tells you the status of the cow. Assuming rov cows (ie more than half) are kosher, each individual cow’s milk is kosher and doesn’t require any bitul
If less than rov cows are kosher then each individual cow is assumed treifa unless you check.
The gemara says rov cows are kosher, some poskim feel thus metzius has changed and currently rov cows are treifa.
In other words if 14% have this problem, each cow is assumed to be from 86% non stapled and all milk is fine. However if 51% are stapled we MAY have a problem
Poppa, DY, & Ubiquitin
We need to separate out the stomach piercing issue (which is not a problem for CY because those cows are not used) and Rav Shachter’s problem (which applies to all milk).
With regard to the stomach piercing problem, where records are kept and the company KNOWS which cows are treifos, I don’t see how we could deliberately turn a blind eye. A Rav at that point in the process could not pasken on that cow that it is mutar when he knows that the company has records of it being a treifa.
I personally asked Rav Shachter about his problem. He told me that treifos are a miyut hamatzui in cows (which is why we check the lungs) which is well over 1/60 (he did not say that treifos are a rov). He said in Europe and the early days of America where milk came cow by cow you could say kol d’porush m’ruba porush and drink milk. Nowadays that it is all mixed together and we know a miyut hamatzui of that milk is treif, he doesn’t know how we can drink the milk. Rav Schachter said that he has been searching for years for a satisfactory answer to this problem.
Poppa, your question about R’Meir is a very good one. I will try and investigate to see if there some discussion as to how R’Meir ever drank milk.
R’Yehuda could drink milk as long as it wasn’t mixed together with that of many other cows, because of kol d’porush. Meat isn’t a problem because when the cows are shechted we check the only treifa that is a miyut hamatzui.
R’ shechter’s holds this to no longer be true and that rov cows are treifa.
Unless you do x-rays on the cows (which there is no chiyuv to do), the halachah assumes rov are not treifos. The fact that rov cows are found to be treifos after shechitah is of no halachic import; extrapolation is statistically important, not halachically significant. (This is how I understand R’ Elyashiv’s reported response to R’ Schachter).
There is no pssible way for the metzius to change; rov is not a statistic (which is subject to change), it’a a “chok hateva”, as recorded in chaza”l, and can never change.
But do we ever say that the rov is a super strong 60-1 rov? And if it was, you’d expect some discourse on it with R’ Meir who doesn’t hold of rov except in super majority cases.
As per my previous post, this rov has nothing to do with specific numbers, so it wouldn’t be subject to this machlokes.
FTR, AFAIK there are some gedolei haposkim who say like benignuman reported above from R’ Reisman, that the stapling causes a problem, because those treifos are known in advance.
It is a very valid reason to be makpid on CY today even if you hold of R’ Moshe’s heter.
Ubiquitin,
Rav Shachter does not say that the majority of cows are treifos.
Sam, Ben,
Re: Rabbi Schachter’s issue. I wasn’t aware he held that. You both say he mixes meat (and would eat say hot dogs) because we check for the miut hamatzui, but I’m not sure why only a miut hamatzui is a problem, and not any rov. Is there some sort of rov in the gemara that even 1/60 cows don’t have any of the other treifos?
But the real issue I was driving at is: Does the gemara say that R’ Yehuda held you can’t mix milk? no. Does it say that we are allowed to because it is less than 1/60? no. It kind of seems like DY’s answer is correct.
And as far as that the cows are known in the dairy which one has stapled stomach, can we discuss that a bit?
The rov of rov beheimos used is a ruba d’leisah kaman, so we aren’t using the lomdus of kol d’parish, rather, the rov is paskening that there is no treifah at all. But if you call up the dairy, you can easily determine that in fact some of them are treifos. So then we’d need your ruba d’isah kaman of kol d’parish (is this kavua?), but, like you say you can’t have a rov there because you know which are which–you can only have a rov once it is parish but by then it is all mixed together. yah, that sounds pretty bad.
But that problem is only for non-CY which has stapled stomachs because then we know some are treif and need the ruba d’isah kaman. But for CY, we can just use the ruba d’leisah kaman, no?
With regard to the stomach piercing problem, where records are kept and the company KNOWS which cows are treifos, I don’t see how we could deliberately turn a blind eye. A Rav at that point in the process could not pasken on that cow that it is mutar when he knows that the company has records of it being a treifa.
He’s not there when it’s milked, so he’s not “turning a blind eye”. I don’t know that the company’s “yediyah” is halachically significant.
This is why the problem might be worse, potentially, for CY milk (except that AFAIK they remove those cows for CY milk).
Benign, thanks I haven’t heard from him in awhile and missed a point
DY, according to you and many poskim it is not subject to changeAnd that us fine I rely in them too. Even R’ shechter relies on them and yang moche when the hashgacha he copaskens for allows it.
(there are other things as well)
DY,
You wrote: “There is no pssible way for the metzius to change; rov is not a statistic (which is subject to change), it’a a “chok hateva”, as recorded in chaza”l, and can never change.
That is a tremendous, tremendous chiddush. I have never heard of any pshat in rov that it is not a statistic and there are numerous Gemaras that discuss it as if it is a statistic. I assume you are only making this claim for rubba d’leisa kamman and still it seems untenable. For example the gemara says that you can rely on a rov that a given pregnancy will not result in a boy being born because 50% of births are girls and some percentage of pregnancies miscarry. This is a rubba d’leisa kamman that clearly seems to be using statistics.
“It is a very valid reason to be makpid on CY today even if you hold of R’ Moshe’s heter.”
“But that problem is only for non-CY which has stapled stomachs because then we know some are treif and need the ruba d’isah kaman. But for CY, we can just use the ruba d’leisah kaman, no?”
This is why I am makpid on CY today (and for keilim, butter, and powdered milk).
Poppa,
Even according to Rav Shachter you can mix milk from two cows together according to R’Yehuda. He only holds there is a problem when statistically speaking it is more likely than not that there is some milk from a treif cow in the mix. I haven’t run the math, but I presume that if 1/10 cows is treif, then if you have a mixture from 10 cows there is a strong rubba d’leisa kamman that this mixture contains treif milk.
It isn’t shver to me that the Gemara would not discuss such a case if it was uncommon in those times to mix the milk of many different cows.
Oomis, why does it have nothing to do with being machmir across the board for all dairy? If there’s no safek anymore, go for it! “
Rationalfrummie, I personally drink chalav stam. But if someone already claims to be cholov Yisroel, they cannot have it both ways. Either they are or they are not. If they eat stam ice cream (fineby me), they are clearly not holding by Cholov Yisroel. I am not judging them unfavorably for not being C”Y. I am just pointing out that it is a little hypocritical to claim to be one thing while doing another that contradicts the claim. Kind of like claiming to be tzniusdig, but when you are in Florida you go in mixed swimming on the beach.
I know someone who eats CY in the house, but not out.
Is that common?
Ben: Actually, Rav Schachter holds that Rov dairy cows are Treifos Bizman Hazeh. (Or, he quotes those who did research and found that they are.) However, that fact is not relevant to his Shittah on mixed milk, which he would hold is Assur even without Rov Treifos.
Sam2,
When I asked him why he doesn’t drink milk he told me what I wrote above. He didn’t mention anything about rov treifos.
I am curious to know how such research would have been done. Why would anyone take the time and money for such research?
Sorry for jumping in so late to this enlightening and light hearted/serious debate… But.. Back in the “day” (1987) I did some work for a reliable west coast organization. I can tell you that at least back then,(as far as I was aware, and I was the paid mashgiach) there was no seperation of cows for C”Y or chalav stam whatsoever. I was to watch the milking, collecting and transferring to and checking of the transport trucks.
It was the SAME COWS for all production runs from the three different farms I supervised.
Ben: He quoted an article by his son who quoted someone (it might have been Rabbi Bleich) who said that an obscenely high number of dairy cows (upwards of 80 or 90%, I don’t remember which) are Treifos by the time they die.
Jusumphryid,
The stomach piercing problem only came to light in the 90’s. I don’t remember the exact year (93 or 94). It was only after that C”Y milk production started separating out the effected cows.
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