Mashgichim are always on the lookout for more and more kashrus issues!
Why?
Because as long as there are issues, there will be Parnassah for them..
Years ago, I had a close friend that worked in the catering business and related to me horror stories.
He explained, for example, that most appetizers at weddings are salads....
So when Gush Katif closed down, he had to start watching out for bugs in the lettuce!
He couldn't buy bodek, since his average wedding had 400 people.... that would amount to a fortune!..
So he bought Romaine on the market and washed them and some erlicher guy would go over most of the batch as proscribed by the Shulchan Aruch.
The Heimishe Hashgacha Company that he employed smelled $$$$$$$$$, so they ruled that the Shulchan Aruch means nothing and the Catering company needs a mashgiach to look over each and every lettuce...
So you can just imagine the scene on the day of the wedding, having 10 to 15 kollel guys now looking over the lettuce.. and now had to charge extra for this Chumrah that the client didn't want!
Then this particular Hashgacha decided that the Vodka "Grey Goose" was no good, even though its on the Star K and O U Lists...
So this friend now had to fight with the customer, because the customer couldn't understand , " why he was disallowing the vodka, when its on the kosher list and the Caterer wasn't even supplying the product. So even though he had nothing to do with Liquor, the customer couldn't put "Grey Goose" on the tables and couldn't give him a proper explanation.
The came the grape situation... did you know that grapes have insects? Well, nobody knows that... and even the grapes don't know that...but the Baal hamachsher who needed to feed his 10 fledglings he must have known that, and now required that a Mashgiach wash each and every grape and inspect them!
The blueberry situation came next, with the Mashgiach telling him that only a mashgiach could wash and inspect each and every blueberry,
since the Kollel guys were experts in "blueberry insects"
Now my friend couldn't use strawberries, blueberries, grapes and couldn't have the customer bring his own kosher Grey Goose...because it wasn't worth hiring all these guys to inspect each and every single fruit and it wasn't worth fighting with the Baal Hamachsher over the Vodka!
The Truth is that Grapes and Blueberries have a Chazaka that it doesn't have insects ...and therefore does not require inspection and especially doesn't require 'expert' inspection....
So what happened?
I'll tell you what happened...... it's a secret so don't spread it around...
According to the Shulchan Aruch, you do not have to inspect each and every Romaine leaf...
anyone that tells you that is a LIAR!
The Shulchan Aruch requires that you check "roiv"
For example if you buy a box of Romaine at Costco which contains 5 bags, those 5 bags become one batch.
You open the first bag at random and inspect 100 leaves and if there are no insects in those 100 leaves the entire bag is Kosher with no further inspection needed from that bag.
The other 4 bags just require you to take a little bunch from each bag and inspect..
Now if you inspected the first 100 leaves and found an insect, you are required to begin to count again 100 insect free leaves. Also if you found an insect in the other 4 bags from the bunch that you took out, you have to begin counting from that bag 100 insect free leaves!
Now Bodek and Positive do the same thing, but they won't tell you that....
These companies have tremendous $$$$$$ at stake, so they pressure the Hashgacha Companies to discourage the "oilim goilim" from buying Romaine and Iceberg lettuce , to promote their own interests!
Bodek and Positive also are under Hashgacha, and its in the interest of the Bodek and Positive Mashgichim to push Bodek and Positive products!
So, Yes, its all a money thing..
Lately there were rumors that there are insects in Tropicana Orange Juice! What I don't understand is that New Square Orange Juice is Tropicana, why wasn't there a problem with New Square Orange Juice?
So now a guy from the 5 Towns Jewish Times went to Israel to meet Rav Kanievsky with a recorder to establish and clarify once and for all the story with the OJ!
Mr. Larry Gordon, owner of the Five Towns Jewish Times, visited Rav Chaim Kanievsky Shlita on Sunday afternoon at a little bit before 4:00 PM and presented him with a number of Halachic shailos from the United States. These shailos were written in Hebrew and Rav Chaim read them himself and then responded. His responses were videotaped.
In a previous article regarding Tropicana orange juice, I (rabbi Yair Hoffman) had presented 4 factors in which Poskim might either forbid or permit the orange juice, even though scale bugs are being consistently found in each cup of the juice.
The fourth factor dealt with whether there is an obligation to remove an item that cannot be identified as a bug to the naked eye of a trained expert within the mixture—even though he may be able to identify it as a bug were it not in a mixture.
Below, we reproduce the first question that was posed and Rav Chaim’s response.
Rav Chaim said that the Tropicana juice would be permitted.
1. יש חוקרים בחו”ל שמצאו במין אחד של מיץ תפוזים תולעים (בשם סקייל באגז). ורק מוציאים את התולעים עם מגדלת לאחר שסיננו את המיץ עם בד דק דק. ואי אפשר לראות את התולעים בתוך ה”בד הסינון” בלא המגדלת. ולוקחים את התולעת על ידי מחט ומניחים אותו על נייר. ועכשיו שאין התולעת בתוך המיץ – אפשר למומחה לראותו בעינים אף בלי מגדלת מה שלא היה אפשר לפני-כן. ובכל כוס וכוס התולעים האלו נמצאים. האם זה נחשב למוחזק בתולעים? האם יש חיוב לסננן את המיץ לפני ששותים אותו?
There are investigators in USA that found scale bugs in orange juice. They only find the bugs with a jeweler’s loupe magnifying glass after they strain it with a very thin cloth. It is not possible to see the bugs in the cloth without the magnifier. They take the bug with a needle and place it on a piece of paper. Now that the bug is no longer in the juice an expert can see it – even with his eyes – something not possible beforehand. In each and every cup these bugs are found. Is this considered muchzak b’tolayim? Is there an obligation to filter the juice before one drinks it?
לא צריך לחשוש.
A Talmid Chochom that was present when the question was posed explained that it was on account of the fourth factor that Rav Chaim ruled in this manner.
