Jerusalem – A female pig by the name of Barbie lies anaesthetised on a bed, a pulse monitor clipped to her snout as it pokes out from under a blanket
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Staff in blue medical scrubs crowd around her, examining an image of the inside of her colon, shown on a computer screen above the bed.
Unusually in the pig world, Barbie was raised by Jews.
Researcher Sharon Goldfarb-Albak strokes the animal’s head tenderly.
“I love pigs! The Bible says don’t eat pig, so I don’t eat pig, but that doesn’t mean I can’t pet them and make them my friends,” she says.
Pork plant
Kibbutz Lahav is a controversial enterprise in Israel, the world’s only predominantly Jewish state. Eating pork is prohibited under Jewish dietary laws, and to many Jews the pig has a deep cultural symbolism representing all that is unholy.
Raising pigs for pork has been banned in Israel since 1963, apart from in a small, traditionally Arab-Christian area in the north of the country.
But the kibbutz maintains vehemently that the primary purpose of its herd is for medical research, which makes the operation legal.
However, it also has a factory, in which it processes excess animals, and those raised to provide organs for research, to be sold for meat.
And when the day’s medical trial – testing of equipment for screening for colorectal cancer – is over, some of the researchers tuck in as the institute’s manager doles out plates of sizzling pork chops from a barbecue.
Ofer Doron is passionately secular and a proud pork eater.
But he says about a quarter of the Kibbutz’s staff are kippa-wearing, religious Jews, happy to work with the pigs for research, but not to consume their meat.
“Saving lives is one of the biggest Jewish commandments,” he says.
Read the full story at BBC News
To reconsile their desire to raise pigs for research with not wishing to let the “leftover” pigs go to waste, they should export the pork.
This company pig-roast is problematic.
B”H, I was worried what we will do now that the graves are taken care of,the parents from Emanuel are released & the son starving mom case is over we need a good summer fight I call on all chareidem to march on this place pelt it with stones & burn garbage cans because if we sit queit now these rishoyim will force our kids to eat pork
I have a request any benefit to humanity because of this research should be banned to use by cherideim. The ban also should be implemented by their gedoleim
One cannot eat pig nothing else, lets stop making up rules that do not exist
On a list of the ten most important issues confronting the chareidi kehillah in EY, dealing with a few secular yidden in a kibbutz raising chazerim for medical research I(and having a porkchop barbecue on weekends) is probably no. 28. They are NOT forcing any frumme yid to eat chazerfleish and we shouldn’t be telling them to eat only fleish with a Belzer hashgacah. Please, get a life, a leave these people alone.
It is perfectly muttar for a Yid to receive pork-derived insulin and heart valves made out of pig vessels.
Nothing to say, but these people from that kibbutz, etc. are giving excuses for their actions. In truth, Jews are not only not allowed to eat the davar acher but are not allowed to have contact with it. As far the excuse for research, why farm them on Jewish soil; they can be imported just for the research labs. But, with so many non-Jewish Russians, it means good business, as they love that meat. In the meantime, there’s a whole new interpretation of Torah laws today to fit their own agendas.
instead of being chozer bitshuva they are being chazarim bishallah
To:#27 – the answer/comment to #17 was also meant for you.