It happened in the late 1950s. But first, a brief description of a problem that really has nothing to do with us.

It happens to be that a pig can sometimes be, well, a pig. And, sometimes, a pig can be so into itself and not care about his or her fellow pig and start munching on a fellow pig’s ears and/or tail. This cannibalistic practice, of course, is not very good news for pig farmers.

Enter Macfarlan Smith, a 200 plus year pharmaceutical company located in Edinburgh, Scotland. They were working on inventing a new type of local anesthetic—one that enhanced the use of lidocaine as a dental anesthetic—when by accident they discovered a bitter truth. They accidentally created the bitterest item known to man—“Denatonium benzoate.” And they called it, “Bitrex.”

Someone then thought of an einfal (that’s Yiddish for a brilliant idea). Why not use this new item and put it in a greasy-type paint in order to coat the ears and tails of the potential victims of the cannibal pigs? It worked. It was first implemented on a Danish pig farm in the late 1950s and spread throughout the 1960s.

In the 1980s, a second einfal developed. Why not use it to deter young children from ingesting poisonous chemicals? This too worked beautifully.

And finally, the third einfal. We know that when milk falls on the outside of a hot fleishig pot—it causes serious problems of treifing up the pot and possibly the food. This question has particular relevance for factories and industrial food production, especially those that use jacketed steam systems and or pipes for heating that need to be kashered. The discussion is rooted in Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 92:5.

We will first discuss the einfal and then, the different positions of the poskim on this issue. The third einfal was to introduce “Bitrex” into the water behind the steam jacket. This would prevent the need for dumping the water in the steam jacketed system, which heightens the production costs.

The Most Stringent Position

The Smag (Lavin 140) presents the strictest approach. According to his understanding, when a drop of milk falls on the outside of a meat pot during cooking, the taste travels throughout the entire vessel. This makes the pot and its contents non-kosher—regardless of the volume ratio between the milk and the food. Even if the pot contains more than 60 times the volume of the milk drop, everything remains assur (forbidden).

The Intermediate Approaches

The Maharam M’Rothenberg (cited in the Beis Yosef, Yoreh Deah 96:5) and the Ri present a detailed two-stage process of taste transfer. They explain that the milk drop can spread up to 60 times its volume in the pot’s walls, making that section of the wall non-kosher. Subsequently, this affected area of the wall can make the food inside non-kosher, unless there is 60 times the volume of the affected wall area. This effectively means the food must be 3,600 times the volume of the original milk drop to remain kosher.

The Smak (213) offers a nuanced compromise position that depends on where the milk falls. If the drop lands on the outside of the pot below the food line, it is completely absorbed into the food and can be nullified with a 60-to-1 ratio. However, if the drop falls above the food line, it makes the wall area non-kosher up to 60 times its volume, which in turn requires 60 times that amount of food to remain kosher. The Shulchan Aruch (96:5) adopts this position.

The Most Meikil View

The Raavan (272 and 311) presents the most lenient approach, stating that the milk drop is automatically dispersed and nullified if the pot walls contain 60 times its volume.

The Textual Foundation

These different positions stem from different peshatim in the Gemara in Zevachim 96b. The passage can be understood in three ways: either it demonstrates that absorptions travel completely throughout the pot walls (as per the Smag), that absorptions are limited to the cooking area (following the Maharam) or that the matter remains unresolved (as suggested by the Smak).

A Note About the Tur

Also a bit of a tumul (commotion) about what the Tur holds in 92:5. While the Beis Yoseph understands the Tur as holding that milk spreads in stages and makes everything forbidden, the Bach (92:10) and Taz (92:19) argue that this is not actually the Tur’s position, but rather, he was merely discussing the Maharam’s view.

And that—in a nutshell—is how cannibal pigs helped make kosherizing factories easier and bring down the price and tie involved in koshering.

The author can be reached at [email protected]