Common Chicken Tereifos (Star-K/Daf)

When we check chickens, there's two or three common treifos we look for. The Ramah says we don't have to check the lungs of a chicken, and that certainly was true back then. But, with the advent of Newcastle disease, which affects the lungs, they have to check the lungs of the chickens. In Eretz Yisrael, where Newcastle disease has arrived, they do check the lungs of chickens. In the United States, baruch Hashem, we don't have Newcastle disease. So, we do not check the lungs of chickens, but we do check the lungs [music] of turkeys. Another thing that we are accustomed to check is the Meckel's diverticulum, which sits right at the middle of the small intestine of the chicken. Especially when we have young chickens, >> [music] >> this is where the yolk fed the animal, and there's usually still a connection there. Sometimes there could be a hole, and it could food can get stuck in there, and the animal can get infected, and it would be basar she'avar min hagid, flesh that a doctor would scrape away because it's bad, and that we consider as if it's not there, because it's about to make a hole or it has a hole already, and we make that non-kosher. And the third treifah that we look for commonly is [music] there's a reovirus that's actually become a like a worldwide epidemic in chickens that affect its tzumus hagidin. Tzumus hagidin is the intersection of all the 16 different tendons at behind the knee of a chicken, and we check those tzumus hagidin to see whether or not these chickens are kosher or non-kosher. If there's a ray'a, if there's something that makes us look there's a problem in any of these things, the Ramah holds that einan al b'ki'im, something the Ramah writes in many places that [music] we don't feel so expert in figuring these things out, and if there is a ray'a, we call these chickens non-kosher.