[Avodah] Kosher

[martin brody]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Lawrence Teitelman <lteitelman at yahoo.com>wrote:

>  << I am familiar with this. Doesn't change the fact that what has been
> kosher
> for decades, is still kosher regardless of the hecksher and the POLCIES of
> the kashut agency.
> Kashrut has always been ingredients, taste and equipment.Unless the laws of
> suffeik ben yomo, taarvos and various other things have been cancelled,
> there is no need, with the strict enforcement of ingredient list laws in
> the
> US and the EU for example, to have any hecksher for anything other than the
> big three. Meat, wine and (real)cheese.>>
>
> Even assuming you can tell /all/ the relevant ingredients from the printed
> listing - which as has been discussed isn't so pashut both because not
> everything is listed or it can be listed ambiguously ("natural flavors") -
> how do you know about equipment?"
>

FDA and EU laws require all ingredients to be listed in order of volume. The
only exception is if an ingredient is so small and is part of another
ingredient such as natural flavours(if one of the flavours was significant
it has to be listed). These natural flavours are batel b'shishim, and are
made up of dozens, sometimes hundreds of ingredients. Still worried that you
might be consuming treif, even on a minute level? You are ignoring
Chazal, but then don't buy such a product.

Equipment is aino ben yomo. Besides, when factories cross produce, they
sterilize equipment between usage.
And see Rav Moshe YD 1, 55. He trusts the ingredient list.


>
> "To take one example, some canneries (in China) have been known to steam
> their fruits and vegetables together with treif fish. How would you know by
> looking at the label? And what about companies who use that in their
> production lines where you don't even see the cans."
>
I
So what? Can you taste it? Does it really happen? Is it really a kashrut
issue? And it doesn't bother the London Beth Din either, for example.


>
> There are other issues as well: bishul akum where applicable, agricultural
> halakhot on imports from Israel (e.g. concentrates).
>

Bishul Akum from factories is not an issue according to many opinions.
Agricultural produce from Israel could be a problem, but at the moment such
produce is a suffeik d'Rabbanam, or even suffeik suffeika when purchased
abroad.

And just to remind you there is a Gemara in Brachot discussing the blessing
on caperberries. I think it is around 38, sorry I don't have it with me.
There they decide a certain bracha was on a mixture that was imported from
India. No reference to the ingredients being suspect or the keilim. Of
course there are other examples of this.

Over 1000 kashrut agencies?



-- 
Martin Brody
310 474 1856
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20091202/961f8d6e/attachment.htm>