the "chicken" issue

[quietann]

I'm carrying this forward from futurecfo's post here post just to see what people think.

If I understand the comments correctly, the main reason chicken (and other poultry) is considered "fleishig" is that it could be mistaken for (regular) meat. So this is a "fence" to be sure that people do not make a mistake and eat what they think is chicken when it is actually beef or lamb or some other non-treyf meat. Someone mentioned ground turkey looking a lot like hamburger, and someone else mentioned chicken stew with a dark broth looking a lot like beef stew. I can see where this would be a problem, but...

Why not allow chicken that is its original, on-the-bone form to be parve? I mean, there is no cow part that looks like a drumstick, or a chicken breast with the ribs in, or really any other part of the chicken. And a whole chicken certainly doesn't look like anything but a whole chicken. So how could one mistake this for meat?

Now, I realize I'm actually complicating things with this proposal, because chicken that was shredded or diced in a stew or in some other form where it isn't clear that it's *chicken* would still have to be considered meat. So one could, say, bake a chicken on either kind of dish (milk or meat), but if one took the leftover chicken bits and made stock, it would have to be cooked in meat dishes. Having a food that is sometimes parve and sometimes meat would be strange.

(in my personal case, it wouldn't be helpful at all, because my beloved husband will not eat meat that still resembles the animal it came from. All the chicken he eats is thus ground up or processed in some way, so it would still count as meat, if we kept Kosher...)

wow, thinking about this is making me kinda hungry! Good Shabbos, everyone...

Comments

[noire.livejournal.com]

I believe that in Sephardi kashruth, chicken is parve...

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that if you classify chicken as parve, it's harder for Jews to monitor other Jews to ensure they're staying kosher...