‘KOSHER’ PORK
OK to pig out (really) on cloned bacon: rabbi
Glatt tidings for pork lovers! It’s kosher for Jews to consume pig products — slathered in cheese, no less — so long as the animals are clones, a prominent Orthodox rabbi in Israel declared this week.
And his controversial proclamation has some local kosher cooks salivating at the thought of putting labgrown pepperoni on the menu.
“If the store’s certified rabbi approves me to use it, then I’d be happy to use it,” Shemi Harel, owner of Crown Heights kosher pizzeria Calabria, told The Post.
“People are curious — they’ve never tasted it and they’re curious to try it.”
The issue was the debate du jour in the Jewish community Thursday after Rabbi Yuval Cherlow told the Israeli news site Ynet that “cloned meat produced from a pig shall not be defined as prohibited for consumption — including with milk.”
The Talmudist from the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization was apparently referring to the burgeoning petri dish-to-table movement — where an animal’s cells are used to grow meat in a lab, rather than to clone live animals — although he wasn’t quoted making the distinction, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted.
When the “cell of a pig is used and its genetic material is utilized in the production of food, the cell in fact loses its original identity and therefore cannot be defined as forbidden for consumption,” Cherlow argued. “It wouldn’t even be meat, so you can consume it with dairy.”
He’s urging rabbinic approval of cloned meat so “people would not starve, to prevent pollution, and to avoid the suffering of animals.”
But others think that’s hog-wash — Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of New York’s Orthodox Union’s kosher division, said a cloned pig is a cloned pig, no matter which way you slice it.
“That which derives from something that is not kosher is not kosher,” he told The Post.
And some traders who could potentially cash in by slinging rabbi-approved pork ribs said they still wouldn’t stock it.
“I’m not a scientist, but this sounds crazy to me,” said Simcha Klein, 25, a manager at Kehilla Butcher Store in Brooklyn’s Borough Park.
“I would not want my child to eat pork, even if the greatest rabbi said it’s 100 percent kosher — which I wouldn’t believe anyway.
“I’m sure the same God that wrote the Bible knew that one day there were going to be scientists making stuff in labs. God wrote you’re not allowed to eat pork. I can’t believe that because it grows in a lab, it’s kosher,” he added.