[Avodah] insects in our food

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:21:50PM +0200, Eli Turkel wrote:
:> In the days before insecticide, there were more larger bugs, keeping
:> the nearly (but not quite) invisible ones' population down.

: How do you know there were not both large and small insects?

Of course there were. But with some of those large insects around eating
the small insects, they could well have had *fewer* small (visible only
if you bother looking for them) insects than we do. Today's pesticides,
being well focused, aim at the preditors and don't get the smaller prey,
leading to a population boom for the small bugs.

Which would be sufficient to remove the assumption that the case for
which earlier rabbanim ruled is the same as our reality.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha