Editing Lubavitch Shechita (section)

== The Role of the Bodek (Checker) ==
Since shechita with a damaged knife renders the animal a neveilah (unfit), it's mandatory to check the knife before shechita, as Rav Chisda said: "From where do we learn the requirement to check the knife from the Torah? As it says 'and you shall slaughter with this and eat.' The word 'this' indicates that he checked the knife for them."

This strictness is not merely a good custom, but is established in halacha. The Rosh wrote that "much settled mind and yiras shamayim is needed for checking the knife," and in Shulchan Aruch it quotes from Rabbeinu Yonah "Behold, a person may check two or three times and not feel a fine nick, and afterward will find it because he prepared his heart finally, and the sensing of touch depends on the intention of the heart."

If this was true in ancient times, how much more so in our times. For then they would slaughter a limited number of birds and even those were slaughtered slowly, compared to our times when shechita is industrial, the hand gets tired and the sense of feeling diminishes. Therefore in our days it's not enough to have the knife checked by the shochet himself, and not even by two shochtim checking for each other, because as mentioned above both don't feel properly and there's no guarantee for this - rather a knife checker must be appointed, and care must be taken that he also rests.

And so the Rebbe instructed: "What he wrote about the necessity of checking the knife by two shochtim and bodkim is certainly very correct, but the matter depends on the rabbanim and primarily on the shochtim and bodkim, and unfortunately only slowly does the situation improve. Though nothing stands in the way of true will, and if the rabbanim and shochtim and bodkim truly wanted with appropriate strength they would succeed in this."