[Avodah] Any opinions on the kashrus of Peng Peng?

[Zev Sero]

On 29/04/2012 10:22 AM, hankman wrote:
> Take a hypothetical future Peng Peng II with more extensive genetic manipulation that is born looking like (being?) a Roundworm on four legs, but with split hooves and that chews its cud and has the two simonim for shechita. Would you both still stick to your logic so assuredly?

Why not?  It has simanei tahara, after all.

> Or consider the genetic manipulation of fowl. Here the Torah basically gives us the 22 non-kosher birds, the others being kosheer. Here specie is determinative. So there are no Simanei kashrus utreifus (although some are given in shas and poskim). Then the operative question would be how much genetic manipulation could halacha tolerate before considering the result a new species?

To the best of my knowledge, the definition of speciation in hilchos
kil'ayim is whether they can produce fertile offspring.  Thus if this
creature can breed only with members of its own clan then it's a new
kosher species; if it can breed with sheep but not with roundworms,
then it's a sheep.

(Harry Turtledove, writing as "Eric G Iverson", published a short story in
_Analog_ in the late '80s on this theme, but in reverse; when does a member
of a tamei species that has been engineered to have simanei tahara count as
a new species?  In the story the rabbi who is asked the question comes to
what I think is the right conclusion: that if they breed true, though his
path there is not that strong.)


> Which brings us back to Peng Peng. when the Torah gives us the simanei tahara of split  hooves and chewing the cud it explicitly only applies to the class of chaya and beheima – not other living creatures. So we must revisit the question how much genetic manipulation would halacha tolerate before considering Peng Peng something other than a chaya or beheima. My intuition (sorry - nothing better than that) tells me we have not yet crossed that line with Peng Peng, but clearly that line exists and placing it will become a future subject for many shu”ts as this technology continues to develop.

Then what is it?  It's certainly not a fish, a bird, or a creepy-
crawly.  I'd think that by definition if it has four legs that are
clearly visible when it walks then it's either a beheima or a chaya;
but if not, then it's something that the Torah never told us *not*
to eat.

-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon