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May 10, 2006

no more kosher certifiation?

Ynet is reporting that due to the crisis with the bread prices, one of the members of the Pensioners Party has come up with an innovative solution.
MK Moshe Sharoni's solution is to abolish the Kashrut certification on food. The idea of this is that the fact that food manufacturers have to pay a lot of money to Kashrut organizations for certifications forces them to raise the prices on their food products, to cover the cost of the certification.. If certification would be deemed illegal, costs of buying food would go down tremendously, resulting in big savings to the consumer.

Very innovative idea. Once you are at it, Mr. Sharoni, why not also abolish certification from the Ministry of Health (similar to the FDA) and the licensing authorities? Why go through the very expensive certification process, which forces companies to pass those charges for licensing and inspections and whatnot on to the consumer. More places to save money!! Why force a vetrinary check on a meat importer if he will pass the charge on to the consumer?
Oh, those cover safety issues so they cannot be abolished? I am sure that if you look hard enough you will find many laws that force manufacturers to act in compliance with various codes and processes which their cancellation would not result in danger to society, yet would save us a lot of money.

Besides that, kosher certification has been proven to increase sales. It is in the companies best interests to keep the certifications because they open themselves up to many markets that only buy products with certifications, even if some or even many people do not care about the certification. In the USA wherever you are you can walk into a supermarket and find the most average all-American products on the shleves have certification. I would even dare to say that you would be hard pressed to find average products (not talking about specialty products or meats and the like) that are not certified. The manufacturers have found that it is beneficial to have the certification.
Often you will see on a product two or even three certification symbols!! This is because the company by law has to have certification by the local organization. In addition to the local org, they will also often want to have a nationally recognized organization supervise (e.g. Badatz, Chasam Sofer, Landau, Rehovot, etc..), simply to open their markets to people who do nto recognize that specific local org, and insist on the certification they prefer.

That is all aside from the religious aspect. to a religious Jew, food without certification is unacceptable. Who is gauranteeing that the food is kosher? Even with certification we often here about mistakes being found that allow us to briefly see how complicated the food industry really is and how difficult it is to ensure kosher status. mistakes can be made, and often these "mistakes" are deliberate attempts to make money (by using cheaper, possibly not-kosher additives and substitutes). If you abolish certification, who gaurantees the kashrut of the food? We should trust the manufacturer with no supervision? that guy who is trying to make the biggest profit he can (rightfully so), is to be unsupervised in his process, yet be trusted to not cut corners on the kashrut?

Now if they would abolish the kashrut certification on my laundry detergent and floor cleaner, that might not be so bad...

6 comments:

  1. You make a good point, certified kosher is a marketing factor that is overlooked typically by Israeli manufacturers.
    As you pointed out products which have only kosher ingredients usually find it profitable to pay OU and the like.
    Heaven knows one store in Florida made a lot of money just from me because he was carrying an incredible amount of OU certified food and drinks.

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  2. this Sharoni guy must not be aware of how much business the certification brings in..

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  3. email your post to Sharoni. seriously.

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  4. Sharoni is a complete crackhead.
    He's starting to get a large number of idiot quotes attrributed to him.

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  5. anon - I will try to find an email address for him. Good idea..

    ReplyDelete
  6. rock - I never heard him say anything before this. What else has he said idiotic?

    ReplyDelete

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