Birds of a Feather: The Great Chicken Controversies

While many contemporary learners are well aware of these more recent shailos, they might be unfamiliar with a strikingly similar chicken controversy that divided the halachic world back in 1934-1935.

Enter the Faverolles

The Faverolles is a beautiful French breed of chicken, allegedly developed in north-central France in the vicinity of the villages of Houdan and Faverolles. Although primarily kept today as an ornamental and exhibition breed, it remains an excellent layer and a fine meat chicken. The most common variety is the Salmon Faverolles; the females sport mainly brown and creamy-white plumage, while the darker males show off black, brown, and straw-colored feathers.

Because of their remarkably gentle disposition, Faverolles have become highly popular pets, especially for children. They enjoy widespread popularity among backyard flock hobbyists who favor dual-purpose breeds capable of providing both steady egg production (a well-cared-for hen will lay approximately four eggs per week) and high-quality meat.

Why would such a docile, picturesque chicken become a source of fierce rabbinic debate?

The Rules of the Runway

To understand the controversy, we must look at how the Torah defines kosher birds. Unlike animals and fish, where the Torah provides clear physiological identifying markers (such as split hooves or scales), it provides no such rules for fowl. Instead, the Torah simply lists twenty-four specific species of birds that are forbidden. By default, every other bird in the world is kosher.

If we could perfectly identify those twenty-four non-kosher species, we could theoretically eat any other bird on earth. The problem, as the Gemara and Rishonim note, is that our geographical displacement has left us unfamiliar with the exact identities of these twenty-four species. To protect us from error, the Rema codifies a strict safeguard (Yoreh Deah 82:3): “One should only eat a bird with an accepted tradition (mesorah) that it is kosher, and we are accustomed to this, and it should not be changed.”

Practically speaking, the paradigm flipped. While at Mount Sinai all birds were permitted until proven non-kosher, nowadays, all birds are treated as forbidden until proven kosher via an unbroken chain of tradition.

We certainly have a clear mesorah that a “chicken” is a kosher bird. But given that there are hundreds of chicken breeds, do we need an independent mesorah for every single variant?

The Chasam Sofer provided the foundational ruling on this matter: any new or variant breed of chicken is perfectly kosher, provided it is substantially similar in anatomy and behavior to the standard chicken that possesses a mesorah.

The Fatal Fifth Toe

This brings us back to the 1934 dispute. The French Faverolles chicken possesses a highly unusual genetic trait: it has five toes instead of the standard four.

Does a fifth toe constitute a “substantial difference” from a run-of-the-mill chicken? If it does, the Chasam Sofer’s leniency drops away, and the Faverolles would require its own independent mesorah, which it did not have, since it was bred in a region of France with no historical Jewish presence.

The Minchas Elazar (Rav Chaim Elazar Spira of Munkatch) was absolutely adamant that the Faverolles chicken was strictly forbidden. He pointed out that the differences weren’t just limited to the extra toe; the bird’s head and neck structure deviated from standard poultry, and even its vocalizations, the distinct cluck of the Faverolles, sounded visibly deeper and different than its peers. He argued that this was a totally different creature requiring its own mesorah. Many prominent European rabbonim sided with him, culminating in the publication of a halachic compendium against the chicken entitled Derech Nesher.

However, the Shut Sheires Yisrael strongly disagreed. He wrote that the European rabbis forbidding the bird were simply unaware of the broader global reality. This exact five-toed breed, he argued, had been widely accepted and eaten by the ancient Sephardic communities in Syria, and many had even been imported into Eretz Yisrael. Evidently, these communities either possessed a localized mesorah on the bird, or they viewed an extra toe as a mere minor anomaly rather than the creation of a brand-new, un-kosher species (a concept explored in Tosafos, Chullin 47).

A Lasting Debate

As we sit down to our Friday night chicken soup, it is fascinating to realize that some of same arguments used in the 1930s over a French fifth toe are the ones echoed more recently today by gedolim over the Belgian Braekel.

Does a shift in a bird’s origin, look, or sound break its lineage, or does the overarching identity of “chicken” cover it? The classic halachic question remains as lively today as it was a century ago: If it walks like a chicken and talks like a chicken, is it truly a kosher chicken?