[Avodah] Haleiv HaCompanies

[Zev Sero]

rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com wrote:
> Permit me to explain the mechanics of RMF's p'saq re: Haleiv HaCompanies,
> AIUI.
> The Gmara says that a Jew need not witness the milking, rather if he is
> in the area this causes the Gentile to be "mirsas"

> Essentially RMF says that the USDA is a proxy for this "Jew in the
> vicinity" and triggers the same "mirsas" via "anan sahadi". [I'm fuzzy
> what the specific dynamics of this anan sahadi are about]

Sorry, this misstates the IM's position. Neither the USDA nor any
government agency is a proxy for a Jewish witness. Nor does he rely
on some leniency of a Jew merely having to be in the vicinity. Rather,
his position in the original teshuvah is that "anan sahadi" is a full
eidus *for all purposes*. His proof is from the witnesses for kiddushei
biah, who need not physically witness the act in order to testify that it
happened, and thus condemn the woman and her subsequent lover to death.
>From this he derives a rule that certainty is just as good as physically
seeing something. Therefore, since (he says) the commercial realities
are such that we can be certain there is no more than 1/60 of tamei
milk in the container, we are the witnesses who "saw" it being milked,
even though we weren't physically present.

He later establishes that the "yisrael ro'ehu" is not really required at
the milking at all, but rather during the entire period that the milk
was in the possession of the *last* nochri to own it.  (In most cases
that would be the supermarket, and we can be certain that the milk was
not adulterated while it was in the supermarket's possession because
it's in a tamper-proof container; but RMF completely ignores this,
perhaps because he wants to cover the case of a Jewish-owned retailer.
So) he assumes that the last nochri to possess the milk was the plant
where it was processed; and he says we can be certain the milk was not
tampered with while it was there, because too many people would have
to be paid off, and there is nobody who would profit enough by it to
justify that.




-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                    - Margaret Thatcher