Bais HaVaad on the Parsha, Parshas Mishpatim

Dog Meat  

February 8, 2024

Excerpted and adapted from a shiur by Rav Moshe Ze’ev Granek   

Flesh in the field that has been torn you shall not eat; you shall throw it to the dog.

Shmos 22:30

Rashi explains that meat from a treifah (an animal forbidden to eat due to an injury or defect) is to be thrown to a dog, to teach that Hashem doesn’t withhold reward from any living creature, because dogs fulfilled Hashem’s command not to bark at Jews during makas bechoros in Mitzrayim (Shmos 11:7).

The Me’iri (Shabbos 19a) and the Divrei Emmess maintain that a treifah is to be given specifically to a dog. But the Darchei Teshuvah (Y.D. 29:2) quotes the Chikrei Leiv (Y.D. 1:19), who says that the accepted practice is to give meat from a treifah to a non-Jew. The Chikrei Leiv points out that Amora’im gave their treifos to non-Jews (see Chulin 94a).

The Magein Avraham (O.C. 498, as understood by Machatzis Hashekel 498:8) explains that only in earlier times, when few non-Jews lived in Jewish areas, would a treifah be given to dogs. Later, when Jews often lived among large populations of non-Jews, they could sell their treifos to them. Rashi himself writes (in the first part of his commentary on this pasuk), based on the Mechilta, that since the Torah says one may sell a neveilah (an animal not properly slaughtered) to a non-Jew (Dvarim 14:21), the same applies to a treifah.