Kosher Pork?

A couple of bloggers pointed to the following hilarious juxtaposition on a supermarket advertising poster:

The interesting coincidence is that just today these articles were in the news. Scientists have found a way to clone pigs that produce heart-healthy Omega-III fatty acids. Can kosher pigs be far behind? All they have to do is change enough genes to produce a ruminant (cud-chewing) pig. Since pigs already have split hooves; bingo, kosher bacon! Every "frum from birth" Jew's dream. Well, OK, at least mine. Actually, I can't think of any other inherently unkosher type of food that I find at all tempting. Definitely not shellfish, or meat/dairy mixes, which smell absolutely vile to me. But I digress...

This all reminds me of one of my favorite misquote stories. When I was in Rabbi Tendler's gemara shiur at YU, there was a buzz in the science press about a cud-chewing offshoot of the pig family, dubbed the "barbarossa", allegedly discovered on some isolated island or African region. I assume this ended up being a hoax or mistake; at least, I can't find any links about it today. But at the time, it was big news!

The press sought out Rabbi T., as a prominent Orthodox Rabbi and biologist, to give his expert opinion on whether this beast would really be accepted as kosher. Rabbi T. responded, with his typical dry sarcasm, "yeah, I'm going to serve it at my daughter's wedding!" The next day a quote along these lines appeared: "Rabbi Tendler seemed so confident of the eventual kosher status of the newly-discovered barbarossa that he indicated he planned to serve it at his the upcoming wedding of his daughter."

Rabbi T. was not exactly amused. Nor was the daughter - who was not engaged, nor old enough to be so, at the time!