[Avodah] Haleiv HaCompanies

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 3:07pm EDT, Zev Sero wrote:
> : >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....                    Rather,
> : his position in the original teshuvah is that "anan sahadi" is a full
> : eidus *for all purposes*....
> 
> I do not see where you disagree with RRW's obvious intent.
> 
> RMF treats Chalav Yisrael (CY) as a question of requiring birur, and thus
> any form of birur is sufficient.

No, he doesn't.  He treats it as requiring eidus, but says that a
sufficient level of certainty *is* eidus.   In the third teshuvah in
the series he explicitly assumes that *even without* this "eidus" we
don't really have a safek, we've already been mevarer the metzius,
but that's not sufficient.  Chazal decreed that we need "yisrael
ro'ehu".  His chidush is that we have that, even though nobody
physically saw it.



> BTW, you note that you're writin of RMF's original teshuvah. I am not
> convinced his position was constant over time.
> 
> However, if someone were choleiq, and held that CY was a gezeirah,
> we would require supervision even if there were no chance of a problem.

In the third teshuvah he explicitly says it was a gezeira, and even a
davar shebeminyan that cannot be repealed.  And he repeats his position
that "anan sahadi" is enough to satisfy that gezeira.   It seems to me,
having gone over those teshuvos multiple times over the years, that the
crux of his position is that he distinguishes between merely knowing
something and being certain of it.

He seems to assume that even without any fancy arguments we all know the
milk supply is more than 59/60 cows' milk.  We don't need any special
insight for this, just our general knowledge of how the industry works.
If there were massive numbers of horses being milked, and their milk
being dumped into the national supply, we'd have heard of it by now.
(It seems to me that this is a potential weak point in his structure;
if someone were to establish that the metzius is otherwise, i.e. not
necessarily that there *is* all this horse milk going in, but that the
idea isn't as far-fetched as RMF thinks it is, then perhaps everything
that follows from this assumption can be questioned.)

Given that assumption, he says were it not for the gezerah we wouldn't
need to worry about anything.  We could drink the milk just as we eat
all sorts of things that we assume there are no problems with.  (e.g.
everyone makes fun of the need for a hechsher on bottled water, even
though it is theoretically possible that the bottling machine could
have been used for clam juice or something.)

But there is a gezerah, so we can't just rely on this general knowledge.
We need "yisrael ro'ehu", because Chazal said so.   Further, RMF says
we *don't* have this "anan sahadi" with regard to what the farmer does
on his farm, before the milk truck comes to pick it up.  Since there's
nothing preventing him from dumping in treife milk, the mere fact that
we know he's not doing so isn't enough.  Therefore it is assur to buy
milk from a goyishe farmer.  But when the dairy company buys that very
same milk, processes it and bottles it, we can buy it from the company
because our level of certainty that the milk was not adulterated while
it was in the company's possession is high enough to constitute eidus.
And since Chazal were only gozer on the last nochri to own the milk,
we don't need to worry about what the farmer did.  For the farmer we
go back to the usual din, which is that if we had a safek we would be
machmir, but since we don't have a safek we can drink it.


> It would seem to me that the same birur issue would arise lekhol hadei'os
> if one was dealing with a mumar rather than a nakhri. Since he's a mumar,
> he is just as likely to adulterate the milk. Since he's a Yehudi, he's
> outside the possible gezeirah.

Right.  And since RMF assumes that he is *not* likely to adulterate
the milk, there is no safek to be machmir on.  The only problem would
be the gezera, and since he's Jewish there's no gezera.

 
> BTW, a co worker leaves CY milk in a screw-top bottle in a company
> fringe. Tampering is far from evident. I asked him once if the bottle
> remains CY after leaving it there unattended. He replied that he never
> heard of chalav haneelam min haayin. But it does seem RMF was thinking in
> those terms by speaking of identifying the situation up to and including
> the last nachri owner.

RMF's position seems to be that the gezera applies at one and only
one point in the life cycle of the milk: when it first passes from
a goyishe owner to a Jewish one.  What happened to it before it came
into that last goy's possession is irrelevant, and so is what happens
to it after it was bought by that first Jew.  (Assuming, once again,
that we're not really worried about treif, but only about the gezera.)


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