The Perfect Kosher Ham Sandwich

This is one of the ultimate paradoxes, right? ‘Kosher ham’ is an oxymoron, two words that normally mean nothing together. But are we approaching a time when such an order could be placed outside of the Twilight Zone? Gene manipulation is becoming less a science fiction dream, and more a clumsy but improving fact of medical science. How could the unclean pig be transformed into a kosher delight?
 
Jewish orthodox religious law requires meat and many other foods to be kosher. Kosher means ‘right, proper, fit’ for consumption. There are two basic qualifications for meat to be kosher. First the animal must qualify for kosher preparation. Second, the animal must be slaughtered and handled in a very specific way to finally be kosher. To qualify for kosher preparation an animal must have fully cloven hooves, and chew its cud. The pig fails both these tests.
 
The cloven hoof problem is the easiest to solve. Isolating and breeding for a certain feature is common, and the technique has been practiced for millennia. Gene splicing would speed this up considerably, letting us ‘install’ the feature we wanted directly into the breeding population. We would then crossbreed the best cloven hooves until we had a line that bred true.

The cud problem will be downright difficult. Cattle have multistage stomachs, which are needed for eating grass. Grasses are not easy foods to digest, and provide little nutrition. The cud is a result of the first digestive stage, which strips the pulp from the long fibers and passes it on, leaving a mass of fermenting cellulose fiber called the ‘cud’. Rather than waste this fiber, cows regurgitate their cud at moments of rest, and spend some quiet time breaking the fibrous mass down by old-fashioned chewing.

Pigs instead have digestive tracts a lot like ours, with no extra stomachs. Gene splicing wouldn’t be a solution of choice; the changes would likely be too extreme for our limited genetic understanding.

There is another kind of splicing might work, however - transplantation. Transplanting stomachs from fetal cows to fetal pigs would result in pigs with the correct organs, and early reconstructive surgery would supply the muscular means for pigs to regurgitate and chew cud. Of course, pig feed would have to change some, to supply the fibrous cellulose needed. This would lower the nutritional value, resulting in leaner pigs. This might be another problem.

The cost of one of these pigs would be high, very high. The gene splicing and breeding program would be cheap compared to the price of the surgery for each animal. Each transplant and reconstruction surgery series could cost between $20,000 and $50,000, and if the survival rate is 50% to marketable adulthood, each animal might cost nearly $100,000. The good news is that each pig would be far healthier and better cared for than present porkers. The bad news is that a pig weighing 350 lb., which is about half of normal seller weight, would have hams that go for $500 a pound.

Of course, with large scale veterinary surgery facilities, and a breeding program for transplant tolerant pigs, this cost could go down dramatically. Reduce the surgical costs to $10,000 each, increase the survival rate to 75%, and increase seller weights to 500 lbs. (or about 75% of normal), and that ham will cost about $40 per pound retail. Still, who in their right mind would pay $12 dollars for a quarter-pound low-fat kosher ham sandwich on rye?
 
Move over rabbi. I’m on a diet.