‘Big Pork’ Is Getting Into The Transplant Business — Is That Kosher?

Image by BARANEK/FOTOlIA

By Daniel J. Solomon May 2, 2017

Smithfield Foods, one of the nation’s largest pork suppliers, has announced that it’s forming a biosciences division that in the future might pioneer the transplantation of organs from pigs to humans.

“We want to signal to the medical-device and science communities that this is an area we’re focused on — that we’re not strictly packers,” Courtney Stanton, the head of the new division, told Reuters.

So observant Jews will not be purchasing Smithfield’s ham, but they could one day receive Smithfield transplants? Sure. One of Judaism’s highest commandments is to save lives, which could offer a rationale to allow them.

And pork suppliers already have a foothold in the medical industry. Smithfield already works with pharmaceutical companies to extract heparin, the key ingredient in many blood-thinners, from the digestive tract of pigs.

Heart valves, in addition to initial doses of insulin, have been taken from pigs to address cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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