Rabbis okay cheeseburgers from cultivated meat

In Israel, a group of rabbis has said cheeseburgers made from lab-grown meat is kosher, having determined that the nascent technology does not constitute real meat.  

Kosher rules ordinarily prohibits the pairing of any meat and dairy product. World Israel News reports that it was determined that products based on cows’ pre-embryonic cells and grown on a plant-based medium should receive kosher pareve status, meaning they contain neither meat nor dairy. 

The approval was signed by Rabbi David Stav, head of the moderate Orthodox Tzohar rabbinic organization, and Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, dean at the Petach Tikva hesder yeshiva.  Tzohar kashruth division chief Rabbi Oren Duvdevani and Rabbi Ze’ev Whitman of Tnuva, one of Israel’s largest dairy corporations, also signed the decision. 

Approval of cultivated pork, however, remains unlikely, according to World Israel News. “Pork is so identified as the sign of traif, as a betrayal of Jewish commitment to kashrut, that giving a hashgacha [rabbinic approval] even on fake pork is like coming to synagogue wearing a swastika tie,” Torah scholar Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz previously the news outlet. “It is a public identification with that which is deemed repulsive in the eyes of the Torah.”