Is There A Rabbi In The House?

Who is also a reader of the science fiction?

Admittedly, this is for largely theoretical reasons, but I have a curiosity as to what would be necessary for carniculture-sourced meat (the majority of staple meat production in the Empire) to be considered kosher.

(In 'verse carniculture, this is basically a big slab of meat growing in a vat on a support matrix, blood vessels etal. and all. To harvest, the whole thing is basically sliced off the support matrix. It seems like it would be easy enough to have a shochet perform this removal and to do the needful blood-removal and deveining - although a lot of the purpose of the latter would be obtained via growing only the right meat in the first place - but it’s not my religion to interpret.

And, I mean, it’s not like it’s from a specific animal that both has cloven hooves and chews the cud, even if it is from a vat-grown culture ultimately descended from one.)

A similar question applies, for that matter, to the production of cultured milk that has its origin in bovine or ovine tissue, but not the whole cow/sheep.

Back on meat, there’s also the question of how meat from cystybeasts would be considered: there is the Noahide law that prohibits eating meat taken from still-living animals, but in their case the meat is not removed, but rather shed, like fruit from a tree.

Any perspectives, Judaic readers?

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Necessary disclaimer: I am not jewish.

I have been part of a very fun debate with a jewish housemate on “is kangaroo kosher? It doesn’t fit any of the listed categories…” and the broad consensus is that there are a list of mammals that are acceptable, and if you can’t shoehorn the animal onto that list then no. Which would exclude cystybeasts, I suspect? Mostly because it’s a whitelist, not a blacklist, so it doesn’t handle “outside context” critters all that well.

On the other hand, vat-grown meat is a topic of active debate, and it seems there are proponents on both sides. Including the argument that it’s actually a vegetable.

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My favorite discussion in this regard is “are whales kosher?” The answer is no, but the reasoning comes out as something to the effect if “if whales are mammals, then… and if whales are fish, then…” (and they aren’t kosher in either version, as they do not have scales and do not chew cud).

The really tricky one is birds, because it’s technically a blacklist (i.e. it says something to the effect of “all birds except [a list of about 20ish groups] are kosher”), but it functions like a whitelist in practice, because the meanings of about half the names on the blacklist are unknown, so the communities tend to go “better stay safe and only do the recognized-safe options”.
(Plus turkeys, which were very similar to recognized-safe birds [IIRC there was a list of signs of kosher birds and turkeys matched that? not sure about that part], and for obvious reasons [i.e. being native to the wrong continent] were unlikely to have been listed on the original blacklist.)

Fully agree with this. Kosher is a whitelist, so outside context problems aren’t handled at all, really.