Rabbis have rules that lab-grown meat produced from non-meat cells is not considered meat and therefore can be consumed with dairy.
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The ruling, published this weekend, was signed by rabbi of Israel's dairy giant Tnuva, Rabbi Ze'ev Whitman, and head of the Tzohar rabbinical organization's kashruth branch Rabbi Oren Duvdevani, as well as Rabbi David Stav, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Rabbi Aharon Katz, Rabbi Moshe Bigel, and others, all of whom agreed that the new method of producing meat altered the final product's kashruth status.
"At the beginning, the process of producing meat in this way was based on cells taken from live animals," the rabbis wrote in a position paper. "The greatest rabbinical authorities were divided about whether the process and the cloning of cells voided their halachic status [as meat], and about whether they must be banned or not, or considered meat. We will not rule in that matter," the paper read.
"In recent years, new methods have been developed to produce meat in laboratories based on cells that are not meat – in one, cells are taken from pre-embryonic cells in a fertilized egg, in another pre-embryonic cells are taken from a cow.
According to the rabbis, Jewish law states that the status of a fertilized chicken egg is kosher but neither meat nor milk, and the same applies to the pre-embryonic cells taken from a cow. Therefore, they ruled, produced based on these cells and raised on a plant-based platform will be considered "parve" – neither meat nor dairy – even if the cells are identical to fat or muscle cells from an animal raised naturally.
"Despite the end product's external similarity to meat products, it is no different in essence to the plant-based meat substitutes on the market. Therefore, it may be cooked and eaten along with dairy products, without creating the mistaken impression that meat and dairy are being consumed together," the paper concluded.
However, one of the signatories to the paper, former Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Aryeh Stern, disagreed, and said that the lab-grown meat must not be cooked with dairy.
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