Tasting & Recognizing Purity

I'm truly curious. Many may not like this question, but I am wondering nevertheless. If I am wondering about it, you can count on the fact that others like me are wondering as well.

When I actually had a job and lived in Florida, I was able to eat kosher. And I did.

There was a kosher butcher shop right down the street from my apartment and I shopped there for meat. In other places I have lived, where I have been employed over the years, many times the only meat I ate was the kosher Empire chicken I could buy from the local grocery store. Now, I can't keep kosher at all. The point is -> I've kept kosher, even if imperfect by orthodox standards, for a period of time and know what kosher chicken "tastes" like. For a long time, kosher chicken was the only meat I ate.

Yet, I don't have "refined" taste buds, ok? I grew up on meat and potatoes and greasy gravy, and cheap canned vegetables. So, I am hardly a food connoisseur.

Nevertheless, even I, as unrefined as my tastes are, can taste and recognize the difference between kosher chicken and chicken that is not kosher. The processing of the kosher chicken results in a taste that is distinct from chicken that has not been kosherly "processed".

So, my question is - how is it that those in Monsey couldn't taste or recognize the difference? after eating kosher for years, many for a lifetime, to suddenly be given unkosher chicken and not taste the difference?

And if some people could taste and recognized that the chicken may have not been kosher - why did they remain silent and not question the possibility? for years?

I am perplexed by this.

Technorati tags: jewish kashrut kosher treif treif chicken shevach meats butcher mashgiach monsey monsey scandal kashrut scandal orthodox ultra orthodox tastes trope cantillations taamim recognition acknowledgement hacarah hod