The Kashrut of Cultured Meat1
Rabbi Daniel Nevins CJLS YD 81.2017 The Kashrut of Cultured Meat1 Approved on November 14, 2017 by a vote of 21-1-0. Voting in favor: Rabbis Pamela Barmash, Noah Bickart, David Booth, Elliot Dorff, Baruch Frydman-Kohl, Susan Grossman, Reuven Hammer, Josh Heller, David Hoffman, Jeremy Kalmanofsky, Jane Kanarek, Jan Kaufman, Gail Labovitz, Amy Levin, Jonathan Lubliner, Daniel Nevins, Micah Peltz, Avram Reisner, David Schuck, Iscah Waldman, Ellen Wolintz-Fields. Voting against: Rabbi Paul Plotkin. Question: May cultured meat—also known as in vitro, clean or lab-grown meat—be considered kosher? Response: In the summer of 2013, Dr. Mark J. Post, a medical researcher at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, made headlines by presenting the world's first hamburger made of “cultured meat,” a product developed in a lab from a sample of skeletal stem cells taken from a live cow.2 Dubbed the “$325,000 Burger,” this product clearly was not close to reaching market, yet as a proof of principle, it dramatized the potential of cultured meat, which had been discussed for many decades.3 By 2016 companies such as Memphis Meats had announced their intention to The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly provides guidance in matters of halakhah for the Conservative movement. The individual rabbi, however, is the authority for the interpretation and application of all matters of halakhah. 1 In this responsum I refer to the traditional in vivo form of producing meat by raising animals for slaughter as “pastured meat,” and the proposed in vitro method of creating meat from cells in laboratories as “cultured meat.” There are also an increasing number of vegetable-based, meat-like products, such as Beyond Meat and the Impossible Burger, which is made with the protein leghemoglobin and plant ingredients.
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