[Avodah] Halachic Policy Guidelines of the Kashrus Authority of Australia

[Chana Luntz]

RMB wrote:
> The product isn't inspected, the ingredient isn't listed. So how do we
> know it's there? I thought the whole point of this line of reasoning is that
> we don't have to inspect, we don't have to know, since we also have bitul.

Nobody approves a product without asking the manufacturer for a full list of
the ingredients.  But *sometimes* that ingredients list can include products
which may be non kosher or derived in non kosher ways.  The classic case is
that of the Mars Bars (UK chocolate, approved by the LBD).  Mars upset a lot
of vegetarians when it  said it would "change the whey used in some of its
products from a vegetarian source to one with traces of the animal enzyme,
rennet."  See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6673549.stm  On the other hand, the
response from the LBD was http://www.kosherveyosher.com/mars-bars.html was
"Rabbi Conway said the authority had been "aware for many years that whey
can be a by-product of cheese-making and that, even today, animal rennet can
be used in cheese manufacture. Since whey derived from this source contains
only trace amounts of rennet, it is permitted according to Halachah [Jewish
law]."

Here you go, known non kosher item - rennet, item actually used in the Mars
Bars - whey.  Whey may very well be produced by using non kosher rennet, but
since there are only trace amounts of the rennet that end up in whey that
then end up in the Mars Bars, kosher.  Halacha being applied, bitul.

However there are indeed lots of other aspects of approved products.  Let's
take an example of an "approved" product, but this time by the OU, as
pointed out by RYL in
http://www.oukosher.org/index.php/common/article/1378519 "Drinking Coffee on
the Road".

The OU here issues guidance allowing Mashgichim to drink coffee on the road.
This is not certified coffee, the OU is not going into these various
drive-by stores, nor would they give them a hecsher, even just for the
coffee, but they allow their Mashgichim to drink coffee from these stores,
including from McDonalds, where they are also making treif burgers.

What are the key aspects of the approval:

-	"The primary ingredients in plain black coffee (water, sugar and
unflavored coffee) are all group 1, acceptable from any source."   Note of
course that they cannot guarantee that any drive-by store will in fact be
using only these ingredients.  Who knows what some devious disgruntled
McDonalds burger flipper might decided to stick into the coffee for a laugh.
But they are not concerned about this, relatively remote possibility.  Note
also that coffee and sugar are both manufactured and refined, they cannot
they guarantee what is done in every sugar refinery in the world.  On the
other hand, if coffee does not taste like coffee or sugar like sugar, then
no consumer will touch it.  Hence the presumption about coffee and sugar's
purity (with bitul as the back up, if that assumption was in fact not true).
I don't however believe that the OU here is relying on a halachic rov coffee
or sugar, but on the coffee or sugar manufacturer's need to maintain a
certain pure taste.
	
-	No issue of bishul akum (based on the Pri Chadash) on the basis that
coffee is a water based drink.
		
-	"Rav Belsky said, in general there is no concern that the utensils
that cooked the coffee were used with non-kosher. The coffee pot is usually
rinsed out and reused, and is not sent through the dishwasher."  Note that
this is an assumption.  They are not checking every rest-stop all over the
country to see which do and which do not wash their coffee pots in a
dishwasher, and how many percentagewise these are.  Is it a case of ruba
d'lesa qaman?  I would not describe it that way, it is not a description of
the intrinsic nature of the thing itself - it is a presumption about use.  A
coffee pot starts out being clean and mutar, and hence there remains a
chazaka that its status is not going to change when that is the norm based
on normal commercial behaviour.
	
-	"Rabbi Schachter added that there would be reasons to be lenient
even if the coffee pot was sent through the dishwasher."  Reasons are not
given here, but most likely are, inter alia. that the dishwasher soap
renders any treyfus l'fgum, stam keilim ano ben yomam etc  Note also the
double safek - most likely it was never put through the dishwasher, and if
it was put through the dishwasher, there are reasons to be lenient.
		
-	Note what is not being checked here.  That the coffee pot is not
located too close to the burgers, in case bits inadvertently fall from one
to the other, or steam intermingles.  Or that the Burger flippers wash their
hands between touching treif greasy burgers and filling up the coffee pot
(eg opening the lid, which might cause some of the grease to slide inside)
or other problems, these being problems that we are just not choshesh for in
approved products, since we rely on the probability that such scenarios are
unlikely to occur, and hence an object that starts out mutar remains mutar,
and if they do occur there are usually "reasons to be lenient" which can
include bitul (but it is not bitul being fundamentally relied on).  In a
hechshered product, can you imagine allowing the same worker who works with
one product to also work with the other in close proximity, knowing that the
second is vadai treif?
	
	
It seems to me it is this kind of analysis that characterises approved
products rather than certified products, where all these assumptions are
diminished if not completely eliminated  (even with the highest level of
supervision, the machgiach temidi, a disgruntled employee might still be
able to slip something into the food, but it is a lot harder to do).  A
certified product without a mashgiach temidi is going to be in some way in
between, the usual way of washing the coffee pot in the establishment will
not just be assumed, it will be (a) checked and (b) the owner will be
contractually bound to wash it in a certain way (and the machgiach may drop
in periodically to check it is only being done that way).  Also the
mashgiach will check things like proximity and may order the workers to work
in a certain way and may well ban non kosher products from that particular
place.  The question is really, is all this all overly machmir (and in what
circumstances).  Clearly paying for mashgichim costs money, and even if the
company feels it recoups its money by increased sales, as in the US, and
therefore the certification is worth it, still, if people accepted an
approval rather than a certification, then making the product would cost the
manufacturer less, and presumably they would then be able to sell it for
less, so it would help consumers.

Regards
Chana