OU TARYAG MITZVOS MITZVA 73. Dog Food: The prohibition against eating a mortally-wounded animal

(TODAYS MITZVA SHOULD BE LEARNED FOR THE SAFE RETURN OF Shlomo ben Kayla)
Colloquially, we may refer to non-kosher food as “treif,” but that term has a much more specific meaning. A treifah is literally an animal that has been mortally wounded, the Hebrew root TRF meaning torn. The basic case is that a wolf or some other predator attacked a domestic animal and left it in such a state that it will surely die from its injuries. Such an animal may not be preemptively slaughtered. (This law only applies to a mortal wound; if a lion whacks off your sheep’s tail, it will survive that attack and it is not a treifah.)