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    KASHRUTH QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK

    Please explain the word “GLATT”-is it still shayach today?

    Very, very much! Not only is it relevant today,
    but it probably has more applications today
    than it originally did. Glatt is a Yiddish word
    for “smooth” which means that whenever you slaughter an animal
    in a Kosher way, part of the process is that the lungs are examined to
    determine that they’re healthy. Certainly, if the lungs have a perforation or a hole, then it isn’t kosher. Sometimes when the lung is examined, there is not necessarily a hole, but it’ll have lesions attached
    to the lung. So it’s not clear what those lesions represent.
    Do they have a hole under them or not? Is it healthy? Glatt requires
    that the lung be completely smooth, without any lesions. And that’s
    why, typically in beef that’s slaughtered in the United States, the percentage of Glatt meat is so low. The reason it’s so low is because
    the animal is checked, and by the time we finish all this checking,
    they’re going to get a very low percentage of Glatt animals. A very
    interesting piece of information is that Glatt for Ashkenazi Jews is a
    custom. As far as Halacha is concerned, Ashkenazim don’t require
    meat that is Glatt; it’s more of a custom that we keep nowadays. For
    Sephardim, it’s not a question of custom, it’s a question of law.
    That’s why very often you’ll see Bet Yoseph. It requires that the lung
    be very smooth, without any lesions. So that’s what Glatt means and
    that’s why Glatt is as relevant today as it ever was.
    However glatt actually now has
    a wider connotation. It also has
    a connotation of a concept in
    Halacha called “Basar Shehora
    Bachacham,” which means Meat
    on which there was a Shaila,
    and a Chacham Paskened. Glatt
    now means, there was no shaila
    from the animal. There was no
    need for a loophole to say this animal was Kosher. That’s what Glatt
    has come to mean, and that’s why you’ll see Glatt sometimes even
    on non-meat products or chicken. We don’t check the lungs of a
    chicken so how do you have Glatt chicken? The answer is we’re not
    checking the lungs, but we’re making sure that the meat has no Shailos and is completely Kosher. And that’s why Glatt has greater, wider
    connotations nowadays in the world of Kashruth than it ever did.