Glatt

Q: What is “glatt” kosher?

A: Let me start by saying that the USDA demands that animals slaughtered for public consumption not be diseased or grossly contaminated.  Judaism goes much further (to quote the famous commercial, “we have a higher authority”).  Animals must not only be free from obvious disease they must be free from internal and external lesions, their organs cannot be damaged or defective along with a host of other criteria.  If the cost of kosher meat is high it is only because of the strict attention paid to the physical state of the animals, and if found to be defective, the meat is sent to supermarkets.

Now to your question, what is “glatt” kosher?

Kosher is kosher.  Either the meat is acceptable or not.  Right?  Food cannot be “super kosher.”

The term, “glatt,” does not refer to a standard of kashrut but to specifically the lungs of the animal, which were inspected to have no adhesions. This is a step beyond that which is required by halacha, religious law.

There are only a few certain adhesions to the lungs that render an animal unfit, trafe. Jews who wished to be meticulous in their observance decided not only to rely on the standard examination of the ritual slaughter, shochet, to determine the permissibility of the animal. They would accept only if animal's lungs were completely smooth, or glatt.