[Avodah] Kellogg's Products containing gelatin & interesting story

[Zev Sero via Avodah]

On 18/08/17 17:10, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
>> Not a coffee shop.  They bought milk from a grocery, ...

> Good point. "Chenvani" does not refer to any specific type of shop. I
> don't know why I always presumed it to be a coffeehouse. Thanks.

It can't be a coffeehouse, because they weren't drinking their coffee 
there, they were buying cream to add to the coffee they were drinking at 
their lodgings.   Now what sort of shop sells milk and cream?  A grocery.


>> ... relying on the poskim (e.g. Pri Chadash) who are lenient
>> with chalav akum in modern Western societies for all the
>> well-known reasons.  In other words they "didn't keep cholov
>> yisroel", just like many people today.

> And if their posek said that it is okay to rely on such milk, then
> what did they do wrong?

This is precisely the AhS's point.  He strongly rejects the view of 
those poskim who permit it, and decries the fact that so many people 
rely on them, and then brings this horror story to show what happens 
when one does so.


> 
> The problem is that it was NOT just plain milk. That AhS's word's are
> "chalav shamen shekorin smant" - fatty milk that is called "smant".
> (If anyone knows the proper pronunciation of this word, and a good
> description of it, I'd appreciate it.)

It's schmant in German.   https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmand says the 
usual meaning is sour cream, but in some regions it also means sweet 
cream for coffee.   Cf smetana, which according to 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smetana_(dairy_product) is a type of sour 
cream, but in Yiddish shmetene or smetene simply means cream, and sour 
cream is zoyer shmetene.


> The issue here is not Chalav Yisrael, but simply paying attention to
> what you're eating. It wasn't just plain milk.

No, the issue is exactly cholov yisroel.  Schmant *is* a type of milk, 
and according to those who permit cholov akum in Western countries one 
may buy it without question (or at least one could before modern food 
technology made everything complicated).  There is no halachic 
difference, according to *anyone*, between plain milk, cream, skim milk, 
half-and-half, etc.  Either one can buy them all, or one can not.

RMF, by the way, explicitly rules that we do *not* accept the Pri 
Chodosh, and we pasken like the Chasam Sofer that the requirement of 
cholov yisroel still applies, but then gives his chiddush that 
commercial milk counts as cholov yisroel.  (This is why the term "cholov 
stam" is so misleading, and IMO should never be used.  RMF rejects the 
idea that there is a category of milk to which the gezera of CY doesn't 
apply. Instead he says the gezera applies, and commercial milk fulfils 
its requirements.)

-- 
Zev Sero                May 2017, with its *nine* days of Chanukah,
zev at sero.name           be a brilliant year for us all