Chicken Wars

I'm currently intensively absorbed with the halachos of bird kashrus, in part due to the forthcoming Feast of Exotic Curiosities, and in part due to the current furor over the kashrus of different chickens that is raging across Israel. Soon, I hope to be posting some preliminary observations. For now, I would like to share a fabulous story that appears in Rabbi Chaim Loike's work Sasson HaTzippor. I don't know if the story is true, but it's certainly representative of the sort of mindset that one sees in this topic:

In the early days of the Lakewood Kollel, local chickens were procured for kaparos. At the conclusion of the ceremony, as the shochet came to perform the shechitah, Rav Aharon Kotler asked that the shochet stop. Baffled, the shochet inquired as to the problem.

"What is that?" asked Rav Kotler, pointing to the chicken.

"That's a chicken," explained the shochet.

Rav Kotler replied, "In Europe, that is not how the chickens looked."

The shochet pointed to one of the members of the Kollel, who, like many members of the Kollel at that time, was clean-shaven. "What's that?" asked the shochet.

Surprised, Rav Kotler responded that it was a yungeleit.

The shochet blurted out, "That's a yungeleit?! In Europe, that is not how the yungeleit looked."

In the end, the chicken was slaughtered.