Here are the facts of the case. Orthodox Jews do not eat milk (nor dairy products, such as cheese and yogurt) together with meat. Not at the same meal, not even on the same dishes. We won't even have a milkshake with that burger. Bagels, lox, and cream cheese, though, is a well known staple for Sunday morning brunch; so no problem with fish and dairy. (True enough, there are some who do not eat dairy products with fish. However, the overwhelming majority of Ashkenazi poskim say that is a mistake that is founded on a misprint in an early edition of the Beis Yosef. More to the point, even they refrain because of a presumed danger, but not because the mixture is forbidden.)
We are also not allowed to cook meat and milk together, even when we have no plans to eat it. We are not even allowed to have any benefit from such mixtures; so we can't be importers for chicken kiev frozen dinners nor even feed it to our dogs. No problem frying up bacon (for a non-Jewish friend, or course), nor is there any issue with importing shell fish.
To finish with a concrete example, though, consider whether poultry and fish should be included in the categories of meat which we are forbidden to cook and eat with dairy products. Well, on the one hand: beef, lamb, chicken, duck, salmon, and trout are all the muscle tissues of their respective species. On the other hand: only beef and lamb come from species that give milk. On the other hand: the animals associated with beef, lamb, chicken, duck, etc all require ritual slaughter and the blood of all of them is forbidden and the meat of their corpses all cause ritual contamination. Fish, on the other hand: does not need slaughter, it's blood is permissible, and its corpses are ritually pure (albeit stinky).
Hence... now you may want to sit down... we have a מחלוקת/range of dissenting views. Everyone agrees that fish is not forbidden to be eaten with dairy. With poultry, though, there is a three way מחלוקת: some say mixtures of poultry and dairy are forbidden by the Torah, some say forbidden by Chazal, some say there is no prohibition whatsoever. We pasken like the middle view.
Why is there מחלוקת? Great question!
We are also not allowed to cook meat and milk together, even when we have no plans to eat it. We are not even allowed to have any benefit from such mixtures; so we can't be importers for chicken kiev frozen dinners nor even feed it to our dogs. No problem frying up bacon (for a non-Jewish friend, or course), nor is there any issue with importing shell fish.
Those are the facts, as codified in Shulchan Aruch and ingrained into the psyche of our children. (My children and now grandchildren knew "meat from milk" long before "right from left".) How do we know all that? Before I say the correct answer, let me head of the wrong answer to that question: We do not know all those rules about dairy and meat because the Torah says לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו/Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk. Yes; even though the Torah expresses that very same phrase in three different locations, that is not why we don't eat, cook, do commerce with mixtures of milk and meat.
So then why don't we eat, cook, do commerce with mixtures of milk and meat? Because that is what HaShem taught us at Har Sinai. We then reviewed the details of those halachos with Moshe Rabbeinu himself for the next 40 years in the wilderness.
For those of us with a physics bent (oh... shoot... that might me just only me... oh well...), think of it this way: The orbits of the planets can be explained and described by the laws of gravity and motion. Not that the laws of gravity and motion dictate to the planets how they should move, of course. Rather, from observing the motion of the planets -- and all the other stuff in the the universe -- we have been able to figure out a way to express those laws in a compact and elegant form. For us, though, HaShem went much better: He taught us the rules and taught us the most compact and elegant form possible: The Written Torah.
So why did the Torah express all those halachos of milk and meat with the phrase לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו? And why three times? And why in those particular places? Those are great questions! You'll have to learn the gemara (mostly masechta Chulin) and the comments and explanations of our sages throughout history to find answers to those questions.
To finish with a concrete example, though, consider whether poultry and fish should be included in the categories of meat which we are forbidden to cook and eat with dairy products. Well, on the one hand: beef, lamb, chicken, duck, salmon, and trout are all the muscle tissues of their respective species. On the other hand: only beef and lamb come from species that give milk. On the other hand: the animals associated with beef, lamb, chicken, duck, etc all require ritual slaughter and the blood of all of them is forbidden and the meat of their corpses all cause ritual contamination. Fish, on the other hand: does not need slaughter, it's blood is permissible, and its corpses are ritually pure (albeit stinky).
Hence... now you may want to sit down... we have a מחלוקת/range of dissenting views. Everyone agrees that fish is not forbidden to be eaten with dairy. With poultry, though, there is a three way מחלוקת: some say mixtures of poultry and dairy are forbidden by the Torah, some say forbidden by Chazal, some say there is no prohibition whatsoever. We pasken like the middle view.
Why is there מחלוקת? Great question!
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