To be kosher, meat must satisfy a battery of essential criteria.

While these criteria appear difficult and unnecessary to many people outside the fold of observant Judaism, there’s actually nothing complex or difficult about them.

• The animal must be a ruminant (it must chew its cud)

• It must have cloven hooves

The main animal families that satisfy these criteria are:

• Bovine - cattle, buffalo and kudus

• Ovine - sheep (goats are “quasi-ovine”)

• Cervine - deer, moose

Kosher bovine meat is obtained mostly from domestic cattle and, to a significantly lesser degree, buffalo (commercially referred to as “bison”). Kosher ovine meat is gleaned mainly from lamb/sheep, and to a lesser degree it is also obtained from goats, particularly in Sephardic communities. Kosher cervine meat is difficult to find in supermarkets and butcher shops, though OU glatt kosher venison (deer meat) is available from a grower in upstate New York, and probably others in the US.

Assuming that a qualified animal is healthy and successfully slaughtered according to ritual kosher procedure (“shechita”), its carcass may then be inspected to verify that the its lungs are smooth and defect-free in order to be deemed glatt kosher (glatt means smooth in Yiddish).