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An AJNWATCH reader writes:
While I understand the need for the KCA and Kosher Aust to publicise easily available brands of acceptable tunas, for those who seek a higher standard in Kashrut, it may be advantageous if you published the attached article from the OK Kashrut magazine "Kosher Spirit", which gives some background to the tuna Kashrut debate amongst supervising organisations. The article makes it quite obvious that the OK has more stringent requirements in approving tuna than does the OU or Kosher Australia. (I have no idea what standards are held by the NSW KA.)
Thank you for being מזכה את הרבים.
Then came the dolphins.
Tuna and dolphins, it seems, travel together-the dolphins on the water's surface and the tuna below. Inevitably, the nets used for tuna caught dolphins, as well. Could we allow Flipper such a painful demise? Soon, most tuna production had shifted to the Asian Pacific, and the American tuna industry was no more. Whatever the environmental and quality standards, the world's tuna production was now in the hands of fishing industrialists in Thailand and the Philippines.
Enter the Rabbis.
In Vayikra (Leviticus) 11:9, the Torah says: "This may you eat of all that is in the waters: everything that has fins and scales." The Talmud (Chulin 66b) states that, in fact, every fish with scales has fins, making scales the sole determining sign. But what exactly are kosher fish scales? After all, some reptiles also have scales.
Biologists identify four types of scales, two of which, cycloid and ctenoid, are found on kosher fish, such as tuna.
In the pre-industrial world, fish fresh from the monger were not skinned, and their species could be identified. Even absent the actual signs, as with an immature fish of a type that grows scales late in life, the fish's kosher status would depend on its species. Only fish with the skin removed, and arriving with no clear sign of their species, demanded special measures such as constant supervision or an untouched seal with two separate Hebrew signs, indicating that it had been sent by a person trustworthy in Jewish law.
The Debate:
In 1962, prominent authority Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin wrote that without supervision from the beginning of production, consumers could not trust a can's assertion that it contained tuna. However, many tuna brands were already certified kosher without such supervision.
In place of constant supervision, the best-known supervising agency arranged intermittent visits to factories abroad to check that production was according to kosher standards. As is the case with other areas of kosher supervision, it was assumed that fear of the supervisor's appearance at any moment would motivate management and workers to prevent non-kosher fish from entering the production line. Despite these less-than-ideal conditions, widespread distribution of the tuna continued.
In the years following, Torah authorities from around the world, both Sefardi and Ashkenazi, in Israel and the Diaspora, joined in demanding constant supervision. In 1977 and 1984, the highly respected Rabbi Moshe Feinstein entered the discussion, outlining the reasons for this exceptional vigilance.
Finding it unfeasible to identify a fish as kosher without overt signs, Rabbi Feinstein insisted that a reliable kosher supervisor examine every fish before skinning. The large volume of industrial fishing, he said, makes it certain that non-kosher fish will be present in the nets. Intermittent visits, even if sufficiently frequent and surprising, would not serve their traditional purpose. At the speeds of a mechanized cannery, workers could expect any non-kosher fish to be gone before anyone would notice.
The function of supervision, Rabbi Feinstein wrote, is not to make life difficult for the producer in order to reduce the percentage of non-kosher fish to an acceptably insignificant level. Supervision, he explained, is testimony; it indicates that a reliable witness has seen production and can testify that the contents are kosher.
While certain agencies (including OK Kosher Certification) followed Rabbi Feinstein's guidelines, in most tuna supervision, upgrades were slow in coming.
In 1988, the controversy bubbled over in rabbinic journals. Arguments for and against constant supervision were passionately presented. Most leading rabbinic authorities favored constant supervision. However, invoking the classic talmudic principle that a tradesman will not jeopardize his reputation, Rabbi Tzvi Schacter asserted that since it is in the fisherman's business interest to deliver albacore tuna, for example, to the factory, he would surely allow only albacore to remain among his catch. And in the name of "quality control," the factory would check again before skinning the fish.
Have we reached a stalemate? Perhaps. Yet, by his own admission, Rabbi Schacter's position rests on the assumption that virtually no non-kosher fish slip through quality control. Kosher supervisors tell another story, and undeniable gaffes in the intervening years, such as octopus and clams in tuna cans, cast doubt on his premise. Much more problematic (as the Talmud cautions and ichthyologists corroborate), appearance and taste do not always reveal the identity of a fish fillet. Without our eyes wide open, we cannot know what we have received.
The market may take care of itself, but does it take care of kashrut? How deep is a producer's commitment to quality control? I once heard the following anecdote: A supervisor arrived late to a Philippine factory for a kosher production run. Discarding the fish processed prior to the supervisor's arrival, the plant manager remarked: "Really, rabbi...would it be so terrible if someone ate a bit of catfish?"
Possibly the most interesting fact in this article is the following sentence:
"These days, more than 1,000 agencies world-wide vie with one another to bestow on products an alphabet soup of kosher insignia."
Over 1,000 agencies - but the 3-4 that we have here in Australia want to swallow up each other and demolish any attempt by a newcomer! (Hat tip: SBA News list)
When Rabbi Naftali Marrus does his spring cleaning, he doesn't use a mop. He rolls with the Inferno.
The Inferno is a three-and-a-half-foot-long propane torch Rabbi Marrus uses during the critical days before Passover to scour commercial kitchens catering to observant Jews and obliterate the smallest particles of bread and other leavened foods, which are forbidden during the holiday that commemorates the Jews' flight from Egypt.
Marching into the kitchen of My Most Favorite Food, a restaurant on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Rabbi Marrus runs his finger along stove tops, pokes his head inside the big industrial ovens, examines the coffee maker and inspects walls and floors. They have been soaked in boiling water and scrubbed clean with soap, detergents, degreasers and ammonia.
No matter. With the restaurant's owners, Doris Schechter and her son-in-law Scott Magram looking on, Rabbi Marrus directs the flames of the Inferno up and down racks of steel rolling trays and deep inside the oven. His assistant will apply the Inferno to the pots and pans. Ms. Schechter takes the drastic cleaning in stride. "To me it is a renewal, you start over again." Rabbi Marrus, 6-feet-3-inches tall and built like a football player, handles the Inferno with care. "You have to be respectful to the blowtorch," he says.
Passover, which starts Monday at sundown and lasts eight days, is the busy season for Rabbi Marrus. As a supervising rabbi for OK Kosher Certification, an agency in Brooklyn, N.Y., he and his colleagues are working 24/6—they don't work on the Sabbath—to ensure that all restaurants, caterers, cafés, industrial kitchens and food manufacturers that want the OK Kosher for Passover label follow strict Jewish food laws.
But keeping kosher isn't just for Passover, and it isn't just for traditional Jewish food. OK gives its kosher blessing to items as varied as Perrier water and Tropicana orange juice.
Getting the kosher seal is a rigorous experience that requires OK's 300-odd part-time rabbis to travel around inspecting plants where food is produced. They study every ingredient that goes into a product to make sure it conforms with religious law. Only then will they allow it to carry their trademark "K" with a circle around it.
"We like to say God is our silent partner," remarks Rabbi Chaim Fogelman, an OK veteran.
OK Kosher started in about 1935 as a mom-and-pop shop called Organized Kashrut Laboratories. It's now a multinational player, with rabbis in China, Japan, India, Belgium and Israel who certify nearly 500,000 products from about 3,000 companies. Its headquarters are still in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. It operates as a nonprofit. Clients pay from $2,000 to tens of thousands of dollars annually.
Kosher dietary laws date back to biblical times. Several basic laws come with hundreds, even thousands of regulations or interpretations. Eating pork and shellfish, for example, is banned, while mixing meat and milk is also taboo. There are also intricate rules on how an animal must be slaughtered to produce kosher meat.
Establishments that serve kosher food, including restaurants, cafés, catering halls and butcher shops, need to have a mashgiach on hand, an on-site supervisor, typically a rabbi, assigned to stand around and watch, guarding against treif or unkosher ingredients that could slip in.
The U.S. kosher market is valued at about $12.5 billion. "The iconic brands of America are overwhelmingly kosher," says Menachem Lubinsky, President of Lubicom Marketing Consulting. Familiar brands such as Coca-Cola, Snapple, Philadelphia cream cheese, Coors beer and Tootsie Rolls all have products with a kosher label.
"It is astounding when you figure that Jews are less than 2% of the population," says Sue Fishkoff, author of the book "Kosher Nation." Many non-Jews believe a kosher product is healthier and safer, she says. "Is it? Possibly the Kosher beef is. But certainly not the cereal or the aluminum foil."
These days, more than 1,000 agencies world-wide vie with one another to bestow on products an alphabet soup of kosher insignia. These include the ubiquitous k with a circle around it favored by OK; there's the OU—a U inside a circle—sign used by the Orthodox Union; while the Rabbinical Council of Chicago is known for its cRc in a triangle stamp.
"There is healthy competition, but we do work for a higher cause," says Rabbi Sholem Fishbane of Chicago's rabbinic agency. "We try to promote kosher."
There are occasional disagreements, and what is kosher to some rabbis may not be to others. Ms. Fishkoff, for instance, recalls how the granddaddy of kosher products—the iconic Hebrew National Kosher Hot Dog—for years wasn't considered sufficiently kosher by some of the key certifying agencies. These days, armed with a kosher seal from Triangle K, a Brooklyn agency, the hot dog has been embraced by Conservative Jews who observe kosher dietary laws.
Some Orthodox agencies such as OK and the Chicago Rabbinical Council still reject it. "It is much better than it used to be," says Rabbi Fishbane, but "it is not certified glatt," he says, referring to an even higher standard of kosher meat certification.
For Hebrew National to be certified as glatt, Rabbi Fogelman says, it would have to use only glatt kosher meat. Glatt certification, he explains, involves checking a cow after slaughter to see how healthy it was—specifically if it had lesions on its lungs. If it had too many lesions, then it won't pass muster as glatt, he says.
Hebrew National, owned by ConAgra Foods, says on its website that its certification by Triangle K comes from an orthodox Jewish agency made up of "the most stringent Jews" that provide rabbinical supervision and make sure its products and ingredients meet the "strictest criteria" for kosher. ConAgra's spokesman says it has no plans to pursue the glatt market.
Then there's the question of how far to push the kosher brand. Rabbi Fogelman of OK says his agency has been asked to certify paper bags as kosher; OK is working on it. OK certifies a dog treat as kosher. Exclusively Pet Inc., in Milwaukee, manufactures dog cookies that carry the little K seal.
These days Evanger's Dog & Cat Food Co. near Chicago sells dog and cat food that, in a manner of speaking, is kosher. They are deemed usable during the Passover holiday, though not kosher for human consumption, and have the endorsement of the venerable Chicago Rabbinical Council. Evanger's website touts its products by showing a photo of a dog wearing a yarmulke.
They are a godsend to Terry Socol of Skokie, Ill. His two cats, Ashley and Coco, don't like Passover because of the limited diet. He called Evanger's and obtained cans of whole mackerel and beef tips with gravy. But he also bought them lox—certified kosher for humans: "Passover is such a hard holiday for them."
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