05-31-2019, 09:03 AM
This is particularly interesting. I think we all have a sense that regardless of whether the meat is a cut off of an animal or merely cells grown in a jar, it's still technically that animal. The genetic sequence of those cells has its origin in an unclean animal. Even if the maker of this frankenpork had completely and utterly synthetically created this meat, the idea for the sequencing of the cells and genes comes from a pig.
In other words, it seems like a form of cheating to say that it isn't pork.
Yet, on the other hand, it could be argued that the cells do not constitute a pig but merely a potential pig. And since the meat isn't coming from a pig, therefore isn't pork. After all, if I have an idea of a tree in my mind and create something resembling a tree, it is not a tree. Indeed, if I plant a seed and begin to grow a tree, the shoot that comes up is not yet a tree but something that might become one.
If this frankenpork that's created in a jar isn't even that much: The cells have no chance to even become a pig. To be a potential pig, the cells would have to have the opportunity, if left to their own devices, to become a pig and they don't. Left to their own devices, the frankenpork would never become a pig at all.
Let's look at it this way: If I cut myself and bleed, the cells of my blood contain all of my DNA--human DNA; and yet, those cells are not human beings. Just because my blood has the total sequence of my human DNA doesn't mean that each an every one of those blood cells is a human being. In that same way, the cells of that frankenpork, if they don't ORIGINATE with a pig, if they have no chance of even becoming a POTENTIAL pig, if they've never been alive in order to even be called a pig, they cannot be considered pork: Not in the strictest sense of the word.
And yet on the other hand: COME ON! It's clearly cheating! XD HaShem didn't spell everything out for us in the Torah. In Exodus 23:19 where He prohibits the mixing of milk and meat, He said, "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk." That isn't taken to mean that He was speaking exclusively to goats and lambs, but applied to all clean animals. In this same way, where He prohibits the eating the pork, there is the letter of His law and then there's the spirit of its intention; and I cannot imagine that this workaround would be in any way in keeping with the teaching that's been handed down.
But it's for each individual to make his or her mind up. Decide for yourselves, there may be better arguments either for or against.
In other words, it seems like a form of cheating to say that it isn't pork.
Yet, on the other hand, it could be argued that the cells do not constitute a pig but merely a potential pig. And since the meat isn't coming from a pig, therefore isn't pork. After all, if I have an idea of a tree in my mind and create something resembling a tree, it is not a tree. Indeed, if I plant a seed and begin to grow a tree, the shoot that comes up is not yet a tree but something that might become one.
If this frankenpork that's created in a jar isn't even that much: The cells have no chance to even become a pig. To be a potential pig, the cells would have to have the opportunity, if left to their own devices, to become a pig and they don't. Left to their own devices, the frankenpork would never become a pig at all.
Let's look at it this way: If I cut myself and bleed, the cells of my blood contain all of my DNA--human DNA; and yet, those cells are not human beings. Just because my blood has the total sequence of my human DNA doesn't mean that each an every one of those blood cells is a human being. In that same way, the cells of that frankenpork, if they don't ORIGINATE with a pig, if they have no chance of even becoming a POTENTIAL pig, if they've never been alive in order to even be called a pig, they cannot be considered pork: Not in the strictest sense of the word.
And yet on the other hand: COME ON! It's clearly cheating! XD HaShem didn't spell everything out for us in the Torah. In Exodus 23:19 where He prohibits the mixing of milk and meat, He said, "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk." That isn't taken to mean that He was speaking exclusively to goats and lambs, but applied to all clean animals. In this same way, where He prohibits the eating the pork, there is the letter of His law and then there's the spirit of its intention; and I cannot imagine that this workaround would be in any way in keeping with the teaching that's been handed down.
But it's for each individual to make his or her mind up. Decide for yourselves, there may be better arguments either for or against.