The Torah prohibits eating, cooking and deriving benefit from meat and milk cooked together. However, the Torah transgression applies only to beef. The meat of fowl or Hayot (wild game), such as venison, is prohibited only M’drabanan (rabbinically). While, of course, such a mixture is also forbidden to be eaten, it is more lenient in that one may derive benefit from it. For example, it is permitted to sell cooked chicken and milk to a non-Jew or to feed it to animals. Maran even permitted to cook it (without eating), but the Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Baghdad, 1833-1909), in Parashat Baha’alotcha, was strict and prohibited cooking chicken and milk. Even the Ben Ish Hai recommends being lenient in deriving benefit so as not to waste the money of Jews, which throwing out the forbidden mixture would entail.
