[Avodah] A (Kosher) Can of Worms

[Prof. Levine]

 From http://tinyurl.com/bve3obb


Rabbis Go to Museum to Probe Kashrut, Tiny Worms and Fish


 From the hulking Willamette meteorite to the 
sparkling Star of India sapphire, visitors to the 
American Museum of Natural History in New York 
are used to seeing unusual sights. But 
museum-goers last year were likely unprepared for 
the sight ­ and smell ­ of Rabbi Chaim Loike, as 
he walked past the ticket booths carrying grocery 
bags full of thawing frozen sardines, fish oil 
dripping onto the lobby floor beneath the 
barosaurus skeleton in the front entrance off of Central Park West.

Loike, a rabbinic coordinator with the Orthodox 
Union, the largest certifier of kosher food in 
the world, went to the museum in March 2011 to 
solve a challenging kashrut problem. He and his 
colleagues, including OU fish expert Rabbi Chaim 
Goldberg, had noticed a recent uptick in the 
number of parasitic worms contaminating certain 
kosher-certified brands of tinned sardines and 
capelin eggs ­ likely the result of newer deep 
ocean trawling methods ­ and they wanted to know 
where these piscatorial parasites were coming from.

Worms, in general, are not kosher. But according 
to Talmudic rules, microscopic worms that grow in 
the muscles of fish are considered to come “from” 
the flesh. And even though the idea of them may 
seem unpalatable, these parasites, which 
typically go unnoticed by consumers, are 
nonetheless acceptable by Jewish dietary laws. In 
contrast, worms that migrate into the fish meat 
from the guts, say, or elsewhere clearly come 
from outside the flesh, and the presence of such 
parasites would render any fish product unkosher.

Differentiating between these two kinds of 
parasites is no easy task. The rabbis knew the 
various worm species that normally develop inside 
their host’s muscles, yet they could not tell 
just by looking under the microscope which kinds 
of worms they were dealing with. Could the worms 
have migrated into the fish meat after the host 
had died? Or did they mature in the flesh in situ?

<Snip>

The museum researchers, led by worm curator Mark 
Siddall and his graduate student Sebastien Kvist, 
used a technique known as “DNA barcoding” in 
which a small region of the genome is decoded to 
yield a uniquely identifying string of genetic 
“letters” to pinpoint the species. They ran 
samples from the tinned fish, the capelin roe and 
even Loike’s frozen specimens through a 
gene-sequencing machine and determined that all 
of the worms co-mingling with the food were of 
the type that develops in the muscle.

As a result, the kosher certification could 
stand. “The Talmud basically says that most worms 
you find in a fish come from the flesh, and what 
the museum showed us is that that still happens 
today,” said Loike. The AMNH scientists published 
their findings earlier this year in the Journal of Parasitology.

Still, not all kashrut experts think this study 
does anything to resolve the longstanding 
controversy over whether these worms pass 
halachic muster. According to Rabbi Gershon Bess, 
a member of the Rabbinic Council of California 
who advises on issues relating to kosher foods, 
the genetics only confirms what rabbis and 
scientists already knew: Namely, that the worms 
found in the flesh and viscera are not a result 
of outside contamination but rather the natural 
life cycle of those known as Anisakis nematodes.

<Snip>

Given the totality of the worms’ development, 
Bess and many of his contemporaries argue that 
fish products containing these worms should be 
off-limits. “There’s no question that the worms 
are visible to the eye [before entering the 
fish],” he said. “Therefore, according to the Talmud, it should be forbidden.”

Regarding the OU’s certification, he added: “It’s 
an extremely weak position and doesn’t really 
work with the reasoning of any of the halachic 
authorities throughout the generations.”

Read more: 
<http://forward.com/articles/160736/a-kosher-can-of-worms/#ixzz23WYeqQwk>http://forward.com/articles/160736/a-kosher-can-of-worms/#ixzz23WYeqQwk

YL
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