02-24-2009 STAR-K's Chicken Checking Video

[Music] the kosher consumer is often bewildered by store-bought chicken that is found to be bruised bloody or has broken bones by familiarizing yourself with some common scenarios you will be better prepared to determine if such a chicken is kosher craft or questionable this presentation is divided into four parts in the introduction rabbi moshe heinemann rabbinic administrator of the star k will discuss general rules about kosher chickens then rabbi heinemann will address some of the shylas regarding the thigh and drumstick and the wing the two most problem prone parts of the chicken this discussion will be followed by a summary of the halachas we have learned as we all know the torah only permits certain birds that we're allowed to eat those that we allow to as the chicken pigeons geese and ducks we can only those that we have a messiah a tradition that they are a kosher type of chicken chickens come with some of them have feathers on their feet all the way down to the place where the toes are spread out we don't have a cabal on that type of a chick in the disc kosher we have bold-headed chickens we don't have a masara on that type of chicken either so we can only eat those chickens and turkeys and ducks geese and pigeons on which there's a messiah i remember i was once by a sheikh and someone brought in six geese five of them he said a kosher the sixth one is he said i have no messiah on this i asked him what's the difference between the sixth one and the other five he said take a look at the shape of the head this one the head of the sixth one is shaped different than the rest of them we didn't have this kind of of a goose in europe so i don't know if i can check it the farmer insisted that all six keys were from one mother laid six eggs and but the sherhad said we have no cardboard on it i would not shift it so we have these uh chickens but you have to even after it's a kosher bird it has to go through a ritual slaughter through shrita in order to be kosher by the time the bird gets to the supermarket it's already after the shrita so if there are any questions about the shrita they've been decided already before the housewife ever gets in touch with this bird not only that but even after the shrita where it is done properly the birds have to be inspected to make sure that there are no defects in it which would render it treyfuh if it doesn't have a proper shrita it's an availa if it is has a proper shrita and there's something wrong with the bird there's something torn inside it or various other problems it may have it may be traffer generally speaking the birds are inspected at the slaughterhouse to make sure that they are not treyfuh once it has a casual seal of approval it means that they have been kosher slaughtered in the proper way and they've been checked to make sure they're not traffic some defects in the bird are very hard if not impossible to detect unless the bird is cut apart and they are checked when the bird is still whole so it may be possible to detect some kind of a problem which would have been overlooked because it wasn't possible to find it in the slaughterhouse i would like to discuss today some of the problems that the housewife may find in the chicken even though the insides have been removed and most of the traitor questions would be on the insides which have already been inspected [Music] one of the chafers that we have to deal with is the traces of broken bones it is especially prevalent in the polka bone the polka is the leg of the chicken chickens have two legs and two wings the animals have all eggs but the chicken only has two legs so sometimes there are the the puka is a set as all meat is our sets of muscles now these muscles they help the bird move to have it walk it helps it fly every muscle is attached to a tendon and the tendon pulls the limb to which it is attached in the foot of the chicken that's the part the yellow part which has the scales that are on there's no meat there so if a chicken wants to move its toe the muscle that would move the toe is in the polka and from that polka there's a string which goes from this poker pokebone all the way down the yellow bone and attaches itself until the to the toe to which it would move the brain of course tells the it tells the muscle to contract and to move the toe and so it is with all the limbs of a chicken or an animal it's all the same concept now that actually 16 strings that are con in one place at the bottom of the polka now this is a polka around here this place over here there's 16 strings if any one of those 16 strings have been severed while the bird was alive it is traefer let me see if i can show you the strings that i was talking about okay at the end of the muscles here's some of the strings that come out from the end of the muscles they're actually 16 all together if any one of those 16 strings have been severed while the bird was alive it is traefer now usually if that would happen that one of these tendons would be severed there would be some sign on the outside if the the bone is broken like in this case this is the bone but it is it is broken it may have severed one of the 16 strings that connect around the uh near the bottom of the polka now we are not so efficient in detecting the whether these strings are broken or not um and so therefore we don't rely on expertise whenever we find that there's a problem of this part of the chicken around here the bottom half of the pokebone we automatically would make it trace if there is significant evidence that it happened while the bird was alive if it happened after the bird was dead of course it can't become traif after his dead so over here we have a chicken which is full of blood this is polka and the bone is broken there's a sharp edge right over here which could easily have severed one of the 16 strings which go through this polka into the yellow pond so this this bone if it would have happened while i was alive it would have made a traif and when the when this part is strafe the whole chicken is straight the tops also the other the other pork is also tree now when the chickens are packaged they take all that they they have a machine that cuts the tops and the bombs in half and or they do it by hand but most of the places have a machine the tops are put into one bin the bonds are put into another bin when they package the chicken they take out two bottoms they take out two tops if they want to give you a whole chicken and they package it they may throw in a neck um so you think you have a whole chicken but it's not necessarily said that these uh bottoms and tops are all from one chicken they just take them at random there's no way they can figure out which top is from which belongs to which bottom so therefore when you have two tops and two bottoms in a package and one the bottom has a tray for either one of the tops whatever tray it doesn't make any difference you can assume that all the rest of the parts of the chicken are not from the same chicken and therefore the other parts would not be traef now there's certain ways how you can tell if it happened while it's alive or not if there's just blood over there it is it's just bloody by itself isn't is not a reason to make it traif we don't have to check it we can't check it as i said before and we don't have to check it if there's actual blood there we are now to eat the blood so if you have a chicken like this where over here you could see the coagulated blood even though this chicken was salted and it was koshered but since we see that there's blood there the blood must be removed because the sorting takes out the blood so we assume it takes out the blood if we see it didn't hack out the blood yet we have to remove the blood the fact that there you often find this color of watery bloody looks watery and bloody bloody you may found find it in the chicken or in the back where the chicken is in that's not a problem it's the kumara says it's called the meat juice it is not considered blood once it has been salted now over here we have another case over here where this has a broken bone and since this broken bone is more than halfway up we're not worried about the tumors are getting but we are worried about the fact that bone in itself is broken if we would have evidence that was broken while it was alive then it would be trophy sophic if this bone is broken there's a bone that goes across over here that bone is broken then it is if it happened during its lifetime it's valetreef and of course you can't eat it but if you could eat it you would have to take out this blood because this is real blood this foot is over here there's a joint it goes uh back and forth but over here is a ball joint right over here where i'm just pointing with my finger and this boy will joint makes it the chicken this is the pelvic bone attached to the pelvic the pelvic bone on the spine of the chicken and it can move in very very various directions now if this ball joint gets out of place over here as you see this is the ball and it came out if it came out during this lifetime then the chicken we consider it treif this is called the shaft as that's the way it's referred to in the guar so with all this blood around over here which probably came because it came out during its lifetime it's out now we assumed that it probably hadn't worked was alive and therefore this chicken would be considered traff okay that has no problem with the foot the foot is a regular foot very often it is very often it is pinkish around over here but that's normal for a chicken it didn't grow that way but when they hang it up right after they checked it it very often gets pink so that's that's no reason for concerns only if it's a dark red where you see that there's actually um there's actual coagulated blood over there that there's a problem okay this is another example of a book of dartmouth okay that's the ball joint i'm going to show it to you so you can see how it's here it is the way it is normally inside the chicken but what happened over here was that it came out like that and if it with all this blood around it if it seems that it came out while i was alive um then the chicken would be drafe over here we have a chicken which is all green over here this gangarin has already set in on this chicken while i was alive doesn't get green after his dead so therefore since it there is a reason for us believe that this was um banged into and hurt while it was alive we would have to make it traif i actually can feel over here inside there's a piece of bone broken off here's another case of a gangrene foot actually is not broken there's no broken bone over here but if you um there's blood over here that has to be removed and evidently this went through some trauma over here this i can feel the bone is intact it didn't break and re and reconnect but when you see all of this you'd make it drape because it's not useful to find this in a in a healthy chicken very often you can find a chicken that has these brown things left in the chicken they are the kidneys of this of this chicken they are actually in an alcove in the bone there's one on one side and one on the other side so if you have a bottom it can only have one kidney you will not have both of them in it if you find them in the chicken you should make sure to take them out before you cook the chicken if you didn't take them out before the chicken will still be kosher [Music] the wing consists of three sections the wingtip the middle set of two bones and the upper bone that connects directly to the body this wing over here is made out of three parts there's the very end which in some places they they cut off even though that not required somebody just cut off the very end of it the tip of it so the blood should be able to come out better doing the salting um then there's this bone the second bone which actually two bones and then there's one bone over here in this part in this part if both bones are broken it even if both wasn't broken it is is not traff however even though they're not traff the custom is to cut off the part that is past the break because it looks like it's been separated during this lifetime and it would be like even so just cut it off over here at the place where it's broken this is thrown out and the rest of it is and the rest of it is kosher now if that's all if it happened while i was alive again it will be full of blood if it is happened after it died there'll be no problem if there's no blood we assume it happened afterwards even on this part this very last part if it is broken you cut off the part that has been broken if it seems to have happened during its lifetime and if it's on the second part it's the same thing now this last bone the bone which is attached to the body there are different questions if it's detached this whole bone is not um it seems to be uh just hanging that if it happened during this lifetime it would make the chicken chafe the uh as i said again that it would have to be bloody and probably swollen or green that it's gangarina is ready to set in or mold then we have a question if if later it if it happened later as it does the workers go and they take the chicken and they throw it like this and it would snap over here it is not um if it's once the chicken is not alive anymore there are no problems cannot become tree fat is that now here we have a bruise over here now this bruise actually if there is no coagulated blood in it there'll be no problem and something like this does i can see from the outside that has blood in it as a matter of fact here i'm going to squeeze all the blood out so the that really should be removed over here we have a problem over here with this over here swollen it looks like it's swollen and the question is does this make a problem now actually this wing happens to be attached in the normal way to the body so when i said before that it is detached that it's a problem that problem doesn't exist over here we have something over here which we're going to look into to see what why is this hat why why is this happening so everything underneath the skin looks pretty normal the bone is not broken the bone feels intact and so therefore um it would it would uh it would be kosher it would be considered kosher when you open it up you see that there's actually a piece of blood in here if this happens you'd have to cut away all this part that has the blood in it or go and ask a rubber shiner i said there's more pests over here where there's um just to make sure that it's been done right okay here we have a question um there's a lot of blood over here i don't think even the inspector would have let this go through they'd probably make you cut it off but from a halaca perspective this is blood and it's very there's actually blood in here and it's very difficult to clean this out we just have to cut it off this goes all the way there's blood all over over here all the way there's not all the way uh looks like there's blood inside and uh so you just have to cut this whole thing off but since all the bones are intact it is it is kosher let's sum up the halachas we have learned in the drumstick if the bottom half of the bone is broken and there is reason to believe the break occurred while the chicken was alive the chicken is not kosher if the top half of the bone is broken and there is reason to believe the break occurred while the chicken was alive it is possibly not kosher and should not be used a rub should always be consulted to make these determinations and one should speak to their rov if the chicken was accidentally used the thigh if the bone is broken and there is reason to believe the break occurred while the chicken was alive the chicken is not kosher if the thigh bone was dislocated from the pelvic bone and there is reason to believe the dislocation occurred while the chicken was alive the chicken is not kosher if a kidney or part of a kidney is found in the chicken it should be removed before the chicken is cooked if it was not removed the chicken is still kosher blood blood must always be removed and may not be eaten [Music] the wing a break in the outer two sets of bones does not make the chicken traif however if there is reason to believe the break occurred while the chicken was alive the wing must be cut at the break and that piece must be discarded if the inner bone is broken and there is reason to believe the break occurred while the chicken was alive a rove should be consulted if the inner bone was dislocated from the chicken's body and there is reason to believe the dislocation occurred while the chicken was alive the chicken is not kosher blood must always be removed and may not be eaten sometimes it is impractical to remove the blood from the wing in which case one should remove those parts of the wing that are bloody in a package of pre-cut chicken each piece is judged independently if one piece is not kosher the others still may be used when one brings a chicken to their of for a shyla they should not cut the piece or remove the skin it should be brought as it was found as this may affect the outcome of the shyla [Music] you