Preparation
The animal must be kosher. For mammals, this is restricted to ruminants which have split hooves. For birds the issue is more complicated. Biblically, all birds not specifically excluded in Deuteronomy 14:12–18 are permitted, but according to rabbinical law, only birds with a tradition of being eaten are allowed.
The kosher animal cannot be shot dead by a hunter, or poleaxed, which had been common for centuries, or stunned, as is common practice in modern animal slaughter since the first half of the twentieth century, as it is considered that this would injure the animal rendering the shechita invalid, as the meat would be treifa (non-Kosher) After shechita of mammals the shochet must feel the area around the lungs for scabbing, adhesions or other lesions, which would render the animal not kosher.
Read more about this topic: Shechita
Famous quotes containing the word preparation:
“Living each day as a preparation for the next is an exciting way to live. Looking forward to something is much more fun than looking back at something—and much more constructive. If we can prepare ourselves so that we never have to think, “Oh, if I had only known, if I had only been ready,” our lives can really be the great adventure we so passionately want them to be.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“It’s sad but true that if you focus your attention on housework and meal preparation and diapers, raising children does start to look like drudgery pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you see yourself as nothing less than your child’s nurturer, role model, teacher, spiritual guide, and mentor, your days take on a very different cast.”
—Joyce Maynard (20th century)
“With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)