[Avodah] The Arukh haShulchan on eating borcht made by a non-Jew

[Akiva Miller]

.
R' Micha Berger wrote:

> For the actual words
> https://www.sefaria.org/Arukh_HaShulchan,_Yoreh_De'ah_112.1
>
> It increases my belief that the main reason why we today
> need to look for hekhsheirim is the existence of those very
> hekhsheirim. And before we made such things an efshar levareir,
> kashrus was a lot easier.

For certain products, I question the premise that "we today need to look
for hekhsheirim".

Let's look, for example, at foods such as domestic unflavored beer, corn
starch, salt, unflavored ground coffee, and unflavored water even with
fluoride. These are listed by the Star K (
https://www.star-k.org/articles/kosher-lists/3502/no-hechsher-required/) as
not needing a hechsher. (Other kashrus organizations have similar lists;
choose whichever you prefer.)

Yet, one can also find these items *with* a hechsher, sometimes pretty
easily. Am I obligated to do so? Does anyone disagree with this Aruch
Hashulchan?

Suppose I am at the store, and I see two brands of table salt, one with an
acceptable hechsher and the other without. This seems to be an example of
what RMB referred to as "efshar levareir", but the AhS seems to be saying
that I do not need to worry about the possibility that tiny amounts of
treif might be mixed into the one that lacks a hechsher; rather, it *is*
kosher. If so, I do not see how halacha should influence my choice of which
salt to buy.

Akiva Miller

Postscript: I am not advocating the above approach for *all* products, but
*only* for those where a reliable source has investigated the current
manufacturing practices, and has concluded that the product is
sufficiently innocuous. For other items, relying on bittul is dangerous,
because there are so many details where bittul doesn't work. For example,
there are so many non-kosher flavorings out there, and we know that this is
a category of ingredient where bittul doesn't work. Maamid is another
example, and I'm not proficient in knowing which foods might have an
ingredient which brings the food to a particular consistency or solidity.
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