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As we have learned on the previous dapim of the Gemara, according to the Torah (see Vayikra 11:38) ritual defilement of food will only take place when someone or something that is tameh comes into contact with food that has been made wet. Although the passage in Vayikra mentions specifically that the wetness comes from placing water on the food, the Gemara explains that the “wetness” necessary to “prepare” the food for defilement can only be by means of one of seven liquids – wine, blood, oil, milk, dew, honey or water.
On our daf we learn a baraita that was taught in the School of Rabbi Yishmael that not all blood will be able to serve this purpose. Based on the passage in Sefer Bamidbar (23:24) that compares the Jewish people to a lion that drinks the blood of its victims, i.e. like water, the baraita concludes that only blood from a dead creature – dam ḥalalim – will serve this purpose; if the blood comes from a live animal, then it is dam kilu’aḥ – “flowing blood” – that cannot “prepare” food for potential defilement.
We explore how food does not become impure simply because an impure thing touches it. Before contact with a source of defilement can take effect, the food must first have been rendered receptive — it must have been wetted by one of seven liquids, and that wetting must have been, in some sense, intended. This is the institution the Sages call hechsher mashkin, the predisposition of foodstuffs to impurity by liquid.