Meat?

I've blogged before about how hard it is to get meat here on Vancouver Island. We've been essentially meatless for several weeks now (though we've had plenty of chicken) and have been contemplating making a 100 lb. order of cholent meat, roast, and steaks from the kosher grocer in Vancouver. This past Shabbos we were at shul for a kiddush and had a beautiful cholent with huge chunks of melt-in-your-mouth fleish that had both Soulmate and myself in ecstasy.

Then I got the message below from the "rural frum" Yahoo group we recently joined. I have emailed a shaila to our rav and would now like to garner the collective Expertise from you, our loyal Monkey Tree Readers.

Here it is. These are the words of Yhoshua Trachtenburgh:

From: Yhoshua Trachtenburgh
Date: Wed May 17, 2006 6:30 am
Subject: Re: [rural-frum] Re: Jewsih Week article on the recent USDA report on the Postville Slaughterhouse

B"h

      I am a shokhet (not a profesional, I simply have a shtar saying I know how
and may shekht.) Puling out the trachea and food pipe is necessary, but it isn't
part of the slaughter.

  The slaughter can only be done by sawing most of the way through the
animals
windpipe and foodpipe without applying more pressure than gravity's natural
pressure on the knife, and without stopping the sawing motion. Contrary to
popular belief, the animal does not have to be shekhted with one stroke of the
knife, and this would actually render a large animal unkosher.

  The animal is halakhicly dead the moment the majority of its windpipe and food
pipe are cut. The only way it can be made ritually unfit after that is if one
decapitates the animal or strikes a bone.

  According to Rashi the isssur of decapitation is D'raisa, and a few
commentators say it applies infinately long after death. (e.g. If a housewife
buys veal neck and saws through the kneck at the same place the cut from
shechitah is, she has pussled the shekhitah of the animal retroactively. THis is
really makhmir, and you'll not find people who hold this way outside of the old
YIshuv and Yerushalmis)

    Striking the bone
only pussles the shekhitah if you chipped the knife, and
it does so because of a suffik draisa - you can't be sure you actually got the
simmonim before the knife chipped.

     Now, while puling out the trachea isn't part of shekhitah, it's a
neccessary  part of "bodek," checking the animal. THe shokhet has to confirm
that the majority of the simonim (food and windpipe) were cut, and the only way
to do that is by looking at it, and sometimes folding it in half next to a
bright light. The lungs are also pulled out.

     Halakhicly there is no problem puling out the windpipe (or lungs) of a
still moving, moooing, walking around animal, as long as he has had the majority
of his simmonim cut. Not for a Jew anyway. A goy is forbidden from eating the
windpipe if it is pullled out before the animal has stopped moving. If after the
majority of the simmonim were cut a person started ripping the animal apart as
it mood, it would still
not be a problem for Jews to eat the meat, nor a problem
of tzar baalei chaim. Dead animals can't be mistreated, and the Torah says he's
dead after slaughter whether he wants to admit it or not.

    Halakhicly Agroprocessors is fine in pulling out the trachea as far as yorah
deah is concerned. From Choshen Mishpat they may have a problem if the US
government says not to, because the law of the host country is the law.

     Also, if they had to not pull out the simmonim, the price of meat would go
up even more because one might have to wait threee or four minutes for the cow
to stop moving. Some cows, after proper shechita, can walk around for nearly 20
minutes.

  Its also not impossable for the knife to make such a perfect incision that
when the animal is released from restraint, mucous and blood seal off the
incision and the animal walks around weasing for hours. Its possible in such a
situation for the simmon to start
to heal and the animal to go about its life.
I've heard stories like that from experienced shokhtim.

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