Terefah (, lit. "torn by a beast of prey"; plural טריפות treifot) refers to either:

Biblical prohibition

The biblical prohibition of eating terefah stems from the verse: "And you shall be holy people to Me, and flesh torn in the field you shall not eat; you shall throw it to the dog[s]." According to the Talmud, there were originally only eight types of terefah, however, the author(s) of the Mishnah added eighteen items to the list. Eventually, Maimonides added even more to finish the list of terefah conditions at 70. Rabbi Joseph Caro organized all of these symptoms in the Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh De'ah, 29-60) by categorizing them according to parts of the animal, their minute malady, and any disease, fracture, or abnormality they may possess. This prohibition should not be confused with a separate category of prohibition, called nevelah (a carcass), of eating of any kosher species of mammal or bird which died by any means other than shechita. Thus, an animal could only be considered a terefah while alive; once it dies of its terefah wound it would be considered a nevelah. An important consequence is that a terefah which dies by shechita, while not fit for kosher consumption, does not have the status and rules of nevelah (e.g. with regard to imparting ritual impurity).

The first eight types

The Talmud enumerates eight types of terefah that would make an animal unfit for ritual sacrifice according to Mosaic law:

Influence in other languages

The word terefah, via Yiddish (טרייף, treyf) and its verb form tre[i/j/y]f[e]n (the latter formed by applying Germanic orthographic and generative-grammatical patterns to the Hebrew root), gave rise to the concept of trefny (deficient, illicit) in Polish. Certain food taboos in Suriname are known in Surinamese Dutch as treef, derived from Sranan Tongo trefu and ultimately from terefah due to influence from Sephardi Jews who came to Suriname in the 17th century (similarly to Sranan kaseri 'ritually clean' from kosher).