Would replicated food be Kosher and Halal?

[Citiprime]

I saw people discuss this some years back when people speculated about Worf's parents preparing Klingon food, and given the background of the actors portraying Worf’s parents (Theodore Bikel and Georgia Brown) there's the belief they were Eastern European/Russian Jews. Basically, if they replicated Klingon food, would they be able to eat it with Worf and keep Kosher?

For example, in Lower Decks there's human characters seen wearing hijabs, indicating Islamic observance still exists to some extent into the 24th century, and if Islam still exists then the dietary requirements of Halal still probably exist too. For a protein source to be Halal, there's specific requirements in the way the meat is prepared and slaughtered. But would a food/meat be Halal if there's technically no slaughter involved and it's materialized from atoms?

There's a principle called “Marit ayin” within Jewish religious law. To describe it succinctly, even if something is not technically prohibited, it can become prohibited if the consumption of a food is confusing to other Jews and gives the appearance of violating chametz foods. It’s for this reason the world’s largest Kosher certifier, the Orthodox Union, refused to certify impossible pork, even though the product’s ingredients was plant-based and contained nothing from a pig. This would presumably also apply to the idea of laboratory meat where meat is grown from an animal’s stem cells without slaughtering or harming the source.

So eating replicated pork, even if it didn't contain anything from a pig, might violate the rule.

This also brings up questions about Catholic communion. Before even getting into the idea of transubstantiation, the Catholic Church requires communion wafers to be made from wheat. But would replicated wheat still count?

 

[Ithekro]

Depends on what advances have been made in the next three hundred years. Not just technical but socially within the various religions. How do such concepts deal with alien foods. Food that has never lived? Copies of food?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Given that the Last Supper was technically a Seder, I would regard the act of getting too fussy about the nature of the bread used for Communion, without requiring that it be Kosher matzoh, as an act of hypocrisy.

(I will note that I was raised United Methodist, a denomination that explicitly requires unfermented grape juice for Communion, and I'm a lifelong tee-totaler*; the reason Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch invented Pasteurized grape juice in the first place was that in addition to being a dentist, he was also an ordained pastor in a Methodist sect that was particularly strict about alcohol avoidance, and being literate in the life sciences, he hypothesized that Pasteurization would be more effective [and less noisome] than any of the other methods that sect used to avoid alcohol in Communion.)

As to Worf's parents, well, the subject of rokeg blood pie did come up in that episode, and consuming blood is considered at least as trefah as consuming pork, mollusk, or crustacean (Leviticus 7:26).

For example, in Lower Decks there's human characters seen wearing hijabs, indicating Islamic observance still exists to some extent into the 24th century

There's a scene in a ST book (I think it's in the prologue of ADF's Star Trek Log Seven) in which one of the EV-suited workers building the Enterprise pauses for Salat, facing Mecca as it passes below. And that was decades before LD was even conceived of. And there's another book, the Tales From the Captain's Table anthology, in which the Captain David Gold (SCE) story ("An Easy Fast") is framed by his observance of the Yom Kippur fast.

(*Not because of any religious or moral objection to alcohol; simply because I dislike the pharmacological effects of the stuff even more than I do the mouth-feel of it.)

 

[Steve Roby]

There's a principle called “Marit ayin” within Jewish religious law. To describe it succinctly, even if something is not technically prohibited, it can become prohibited if the consumption of a food is confusing to other Jews and gives the appearance of violating chametz foods. It’s for this reason the world’s largest Kosher certifier, the Orthodox Union, refused to certify impossible pork, even though the product’s ingredients was plant-based and contained nothing from a pig. This would presumably also apply to the idea of laboratory meat where meat is grown from an animal’s stem cells without slaughtering or harming the source.

So eating replicated pork, even if it didn't contain anything from a pig, might violate the rule.

What if the replicated pork was glow-in-the-dark green? Nobody would confuse that for the real thing.

(I will note that I was raised United Methodist, a denomination that explicitly requires unfermented grape juice for Communion, and I'm a lifelong tee-totaler*; the reason Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch invented Pasteurized grape juice in the first place was that in addition to being a dentist, he was also an ordained pastor in a Methodist sect that was particularly strict about alcohol avoidance, and being literate in the life sciences, he hypothesized that Pasteurization would be more effective (and less noisome) than any of the other methods that sect used to avoid alcohol in Communion.

I was at a wedding once where the groom's parents were part of some Protestant group who believed in the literal inerrancy of the Bible. Except that where it said wine, it meant grape juice, so there was no real wine at the head table. The vast majority of people at the wedding, of course, were not part of that particular cult and were unimpressed.

 

[serdogthehound]

I was at a wedding once where the groom's parents were part of some Protestant group who believed in the literal inerrancy of the Bible. Except that where it said wine, it meant grape juice, so there was no real wine at the head table. The vast majority of people at the wedding, of course, were not part of that particular cult and were unimpressed.

I mean the The Wedding at Cana say "you saved the good wine until now after everyone has gotten drunk "

 

[Christopher]

I'm reminded of the earlier thread about whether replicated meat would be considered vegetarian or vegan. In principle, a replicated food item is a transporter duplicate (at reduced resolution) of an original, real food item that was scanned to have its molecular pattern stored for later replication. So if the original item was prepared in a way that's forbidden by dietary rules, many would argue that a replicator copy of the same item would also be forbidden, since its creation ultimately arises from the same forbidden practice. Conversely, if the rules require meat to be slaughtered in a certain way, it might follow that an exact copy (to molecular resolution) of the properly prepared item would be equally proper. Then again, it might not.

For example, in Lower Decks there's human characters seen wearing hijabs, indicating Islamic observance still exists to some extent into the 24th century

I'm splitting (covered) hairs here, but I'm not sure that necessarily follows, since hijab isn't really a religious requirement but more of a cultural practice. Islamic culture actually borrowed it from the Byzantine and Persian empires, where it was a mark of status for upper-class women, and it didn't really come to be seen as a defining symbol of Muslim identity until relatively recent history, in the context of interactions with outside cultures. And the application of the practice has varied considerably from culture to culture within the Islamic world, and plenty of Muslim women choose not to veil. So the custom would likely continue to evolve in the future, and it could be that a 24th-century woman wearing hijab could be a non-religious person expressing her cultural heritage, or that a bare-headed female extra in a crowd scene could be a Muslim without any outward signifier.

Then again, the makers of LD probably intended it to be straightforwardly what it appeared to be, an indication that those characters were Muslim.

 

[FredH]

I mean, blood anything is right out (which is another reason the whole blood libel thing was always ridiculous), as is eating anything that’s still alive (so no live gach).

 

[Christopher]

as is eating anything that’s still alive

Serious question, something I never really thought about until now: What constitutes "still alive" for a fruit or vegetable? I mean, fruits still ripen after they're cut off from the plant, and plant cuttings can be replanted and grow into new plants, so does that mean fresh fruits or vegetables are still alive when you eat them? At what point can you define them as dead?

Which is to say, I wonder if you need to specify not eating any animal that's alive as opposed to a plant. Although I can't think of many things that people eat alive, except maybe oysters?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Although I can't think of many things that people eat alive, except maybe oysters?

Yes, and Cole Porter wrote a song about that. (I prefer the Joan Morris/William Bolcom performance; then again, I prefer Joanie and Bill's performance of almost anything, if available).

 

[FredH]

Serious question, something I never really thought about until now: What constitutes "still alive" for a fruit or vegetable? I mean, fruits still ripen after they're cut off from the plant, and plant cuttings can be replanted and grow into new plants, so does that mean fresh fruits or vegetables are still alive when you eat them? At what point can you define them as dead?

Good question. I very much expect that fruits don’t count as alive as far as religious practice is concerned, but I’m not really the person to ask.

 

[Christopher]

Good question. I very much expect that fruits don’t count as alive as far as religious practice is concerned, but I’m not really the person to ask.

I was asking more from a biological standpoint.

 

[FredH]

I was asking more from a biological standpoint.

In that case, I’d assume they’re alive until most of the cells die.

 

[Toril Toran]

Hmmm.
Coming from a source that is not real meat, but replicated, I would say the meat is Kosher or Halal until it is actually replicated.
Then it is not.
Considering it mostly comes from human waste that is deconstructed, I would think it would NOT be either.

But that is just my opinion

Besides, didn’t Picard say humanity was beyond believing in gods?

 

[Christopher]

Considering it mostly comes from human waste that is deconstructed, I would think it would NOT be either.

Umm, all food is made from deconstructed waste. What do you think fertilizer is? Or soil, for that matter? The stupidest thing about that scene in Discovery was its assumption that waste being recycled into food was somehow unnatural, when it's literally how nature works.

 

[CetiAlphanEel]

Good question! I would have liked to see this addressed in one of the shows, since SNW has some sort of replicator so maybe they'll address it lol

 

[Christopher]

Good question! I would have liked to see this addressed in one of the shows, since SNW has some sort of replicator so maybe they'll address it lol

In the 23rd century, it would've been a food synthesizer (creating synthetic food from raw materials), rather than the transporter-based replicators used in the 24th century -- sort of like the difference between a synthesized musical instrument and a digital recording of a real instrument. But the makers of SNW have glossed over the distinction, as we've seen what looked like a transporter-based replicator in the show. Not that that's unprecedented, as David Gerrold's 1980 Trek novel The Galactic Whirlpool portrayed the Enterprise's food synthesizers as transporter-based. (And since Gerrold was the uncredited co-creator of TNG, that may be where the replicator idea came from in the first place.)

Then again, The Making of Star Trek said that the Enterprise's meals were robotically prepared from real ingredients preserved by futuristic means, and delivered to the food slots by a mechanical dumbwaiter system.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

"If the crew has to eat synthetic meatloaf, I want it to look like turkey."

 

[CetiAlphanEel]

In the 23rd century, it would've been a food synthesizer (creating synthetic food from raw materials), rather than the transporter-based replicators used in the 24th century -- sort of like the difference between a synthesized musical instrument and a digital recording of a real instrument. But the makers of SNW have glossed over the distinction, as we've seen what looked like a transporter-based replicator in the show. Not that that's unprecedented, as David Gerrold's 1980 Trek novel The Galactic Whirlpool portrayed the Enterprise's food synthesizers as transporter-based. (And since Gerrold was the uncredited co-creator of TNG, that may be where the replicator idea came from in the first place.)

Then again, The Making of Star Trek said that the Enterprise's meals were robotically prepared from real ingredients preserved by futuristic means, and delivered to the food slots by a mechanical dumbwaiter system.

True but in SNW they have TNG style replicators in one of the episodes

 

[UssGlenn]

Which is to say, I wonder if you need to specify not eating any animal that's alive as opposed to a plant. Although I can't think of many things that people eat alive, except maybe oysters?

How do they deal with live culture yogurt? Or do microorganisms not count?

Considering it mostly comes from human waste that is deconstructed, I would think it would NOT be either.

Given how overly strict some people like to get about religion, I could see someone saying no replicated anything is kosher, etc, because an atom might have once been part of a pig. This is completely illogical, as @Christopher pointed out, that's how decomposition works in nature, but religion isn't logical.

 

[Christopher]

"A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm." -- Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 3