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R’ Moshe Feinstein’s teshuva on Cholov Stam in America is by far one of the more famous of his. Yet, Rabbi Sholem Fishbane - Kashrus Administrator at the Chicago Rabbinical Council, and Executive Director of AKO, points out that there are many side benefits of being makpid on cholov yisroel besides for the actual Halacha shaila. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus, presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah Anytime. Today I am joined by Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, Executive Director of AKO and Kashrus Administrator of the Chicago Rabbinical Council. Thank you Rabbi Fishbane for being here. R’ Sholem Fishbane: Thank you for having me. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Today I'd like to discuss the topic of Chalav Yisrael. We've touched on different angles of Chalav Yisrael in the past. Rav Moshe's heter with regard to what we'll call Chalav companies is quite well known in the teshuvos. And there are people who are machmir on Chalav Yisrael nonetheless. And it's come to our attention, following the trends in the Kashrus industry that there are actually aspects of Chalav Yisrael that it would behoove people to eat or drink only Chalav Yisrael because they are going to avoid certain other Kashrus concerns or considerations. I know that you've done research into this. Give us a little background into what those concerns might be. R’ Sholem Fishbane: Sure. It's funny. When I started my career on Kashrus I started off in Buffalo, New York. And there's a lot of dairies there. So I would say my training in Kashrus might be in the dairy farms. So I follow that industry very well. It's a good point. Rav Moshe's heter of anan sahadi, which Rav Moshe himself writes ba'al nefesh yachmir, obviously. We're not going to talk about it. But there are things that I would say that come up. And it's changing in terms of things change in every industry and certainly in the dairy industry that if you keep Chalav Yisrael you don't have to think or worry about these. And I'll give you some examples. I mean the first most glaring one might be is the fact that the government themselves it used to say the inspector had a piece of paper, he'd walk around, and one of the questions were does the milk come from a sheep, goat, cow, or you know the kosher animals. And that no longer is on. As a matter of fact, it was challenged by someone that wanted to open a factory or a business in California doing camel's milk. So they changed it to hooved animals, which a camel by the government is a hooved animal. Halacha, we know that it's not, but it is hooved. So they changed that. So that really starts with the oh, really? What's up with that? Now, if you look carefully into the government law, there still is labeling laws, there's still other sorts of things that would seemingly be okay, and that's what the agencies rely on in terms of. But you should know that the, when Rav Moshe wrote that, it was very much on the inspector's sheet and it's no longer there. But again, without getting into the details, it still is halachically covered based on other laws and related laws. The second thing certainly is the DA cows, which I know you've spoken about in the past, and that's where they do a surgery, which makes a hole, and you know, anything, any, kol hayotzei min ha-treifah, treifah. So certainly that's a sugya in the Chalav Yisrael farms. They take out any cow that had that surgery, that hole, so you don't have to worry about it. There's also, we mentioned Rav Moshe, but there's a famous machlokes Rav Moshe and the Pri Chadash, does it go by anon sahadi, which is Rav Moshe, or the Pri Chadash says it's more like even if there is benimtza chalav tamei, but as long as it's way more expensive and, you know, that's the Pri Chadash. And there are some agencies, larger agencies that actually rely on the Pri Chadash, so they'll give hashgachos to milk in some countries that many other agencies won't touch because they follow Rav Moshe. So people should do their homework. You know, I buy your product, I don't keep Chalav Yisrael, are you following Rav Moshe, are you following Pri Chadash? Obviously if the Rav says to them we follow Rav Moshe, not the Pri Chadash, but, you know, those are also, it's not just Rav Moshe. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: And to clarify, because the other milk is more expensive, there's no incentive, or actually it disincentivizes them from using that milk in place of kosher cow's milk, for example. R’ Sholem Fishbane: Right, so I'll give you an example. I spent some time in India, and over there it's a fascinating thing that goes on there, where at the end of the day in these little shtetlach, the locals, they'll go and you can bring milk to the center of town, and they weigh it, and they give you rupees per the volume in exchange. But a lot of the shtetlach that are living in the same house with their camels and their this and their that, who knows what's going on. You can research it, you'll see a very high level of fraud. And then a truck comes around, picks up the things at the bigger factory, bigger factory. So all the milk is getting mixed together. So again, you know, there's different, this and that. There are some agencies that might give a hechsher to the casein coming out of that milk. The CRC doesn't, but there are some. So these are part of this. Again, if you keep a close eye, you don't have to worry about that. Then there's different types. So I'll tell you one or two other sugyot that I found. And that's actually making the cheese. Okay? When I started Kashrus, cheese was made hard cheese. Hard cheese means that if you don't put in the rennet, it doesn't become, like, mozzarella, provolone, these things. There's something called soft cheese, which is farmer's cheese, cream cheese, ricotta cheese. That, basically, if you let it sour by itself, will become that. They might put in rennet to quicken it, but that doesn't make it. The rennet hard cheese has to be gevinas Yisrael. Where the Yisrael makes it kasher by making it gevina through the Yisrael. So when I started off in Kashrus, basically, the only way that we were doing it amongst the large agencies was the Yisrael was in the factory. And let's say it was a 24-hour. He'd be up. They'd wake him up. Okay, we've got to put in the rennet. So he'd go and put in the rennet, and that would be gevinas Yisrael, which was a huge problem because you couldn't do these factories that are 24-7. You couldn't do Shabbos. Why not? Because making cheese on Shabbos is an issur boneh. Right? You couldn't do it. So a lot of factories, they couldn't, like, become treif for a day and then kasher on Sunday. It just wasn't working. So let's just skip forward to today. That, basically, was like the Shach. The Shach says you have to put it in. There is a Ramah that talks about ri'iya. And ri'iya means that as long as the Yisrael is watching the goy put it in, which back in the day we didn't use the Ramah primarily, but now a lot of agencies, because of the practicality and for whatever reason, they've gone to the Ramah. Now there's a new thing where it's not necessarily having to see it because you could be in a factory. There could be 25 vats being made. And there's a new thing called, we'll call it yedi'ah. Yedi'ah. As long as, and I know some hashgachas, as long as the mashgiach is comfortable that yedi'ah vada'is, that the mashgiach is putting it, that the company is using kosher rennet, that that's enough for them and they're able to give hard cheese, whether it's string cheese, you know, the various cheeses that are made from it, based on yedi'ah vada'is. Again, if you look at the big picture, take a step back, and even from when I started in kashrus, you know, 25 years ago, whatever it is, 30 years ago, you're looking at, we'll call it a slippery slope. And each thing by itself, it's not my place to say anything negative about big poskim or big agencies. My point is, it's an interesting evolve. It's evolving. And one that keeps chalav Yisrael, it's not lo benimtza. You know, chalav Yisrael cheese, like the Shach, the mashgiach is putting it. There are many, many other examples. There's butter, which the Rema famously says, you know, where it's fine, but today what they put in butter is sometimes they put in whey cream, so it's whey cream comes from cheese. It can mamesh be givanas akum. There are many, many, many other examples. Time is short, but I wanted to give like a snapshot of the dairy industry and what some of the sugyos that come up where agencies have to decide and where someone that keeps chalav Yisrael certainly avoids a lot of these things and somebody that lives in areas where chalav Yisrael is benimtza, what can we say? I certainly recommend it. Like Rav Moshe says, ba'al nefesh yachmir. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Okay, thank you so much.

Post-Pesach Shopping Secrets Where can I buy chometz? Where is it problematic? Rabbi Yakov Teichman - Rabbinic Coordinator at the OK, gives us the full scoop. Download the AKO post-pesach list below, or at https://www.akokosher.org/pesach R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah Anytime. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rabbi Yakov Teichman, Rabbinic Coordinator at OK Kosher. Thank you Rabbi Teichman for joining us. R’ Yakov Teichman: Thank you for having me. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Today we would like to discuss the very important topic of post Pesach  shopping. This is a topic that gives a lot of angst to many a housewife. People get very nervous about buying chametz after Pesach . Obviously, there is a very legitimate concern of chametz she'avar alav haPesach . I know that you're a member of the committee or perhaps the head of the committee of AKO in regards to post Pesach . AKO every year puts out a comprehensive list of stores that people may buy chametz from. Obviously, you do research to ensure that there are no issues of chametz she'avar alav haPesach  with these stores. So let's go through this issue one thing at a time. What should people know as a general rule about buying chametz after Pesach ? R’ Yakov Teichman: So we first have to start with the halacha background and we know that chametz she'avar alav haPesach  which means chametz that was in the possession of a yid  over Pesach . There's a knas from Chazal  after Pesach  that we cannot consume that chametz . That is a knas  and it's not mid'oraisa , it's mutar , it's only a knas mid'rabbanan . So since it's a halacha mid'rabbanan , whenever there's a safek  involved it allows a lot more leniency. So that's the first base information that we need to have in order to know where we move from there. Then we have to know that there are different options of how we can get out of this problem of chametz because if you're in your house and you have leftover challah  rolls for whatever reason or cereal and you sell your chametz , so after Pesach you don't have a problem because you sold your chametz . Are there any other options? Let's say you have a business, you're a bakery, let's say you're a grocery store. There are many grocery stores that they cover up their shelves, they have a kosher l’Pesach  section and then all their chametz stuff are covered. Why don’t they have a problem with chametz she'avar alav haPesach ? So we know that Chazal  helped us many years ago with something called mechiras chametz , that there was an option for people who had chametz  in order that they should be able to continue with their livelihood, that they should be able to sell their chametz  to a goy . Originally, if my memory serves me correctly, they used to have the people who had liquor, so they just gave it to their goyish  neighbors. And lav davka , they got it back afterward, they gave it to as a matana . So Chazal were kovea , that you should be able to do a mechira . A mechira , and then it belongs to the goy  and you buy it back. And that morphed into more that different people should sell different parts of their of their pantries that they have chametz . Some people are machmir , that they don't want to sell chametz gamur , some want to sell taruvois chametz , everyone has their minhagim . And a lot of it is based on hefsed merubah , that the original takana  was for somebody who has a business and he has a lot of liquor, so what's he supposed to do with all that whiskey and beer, etc. So for him it's hefsed merubah . For me, that I only have two bottles of beer, maybe it's not hefsed merubah . So these are all shaylas  that are involved in how far you can take mechiras chametz . That's the basic overview. We do have to take into account that there are a lot of non-religious jews that own different locations let’s say they own the chametz , is that an issue or not? So pashtus , if it's a knas , it applies to anyone, any yid who owns a chametz . There are some acharonim  that do mention that if somebody was a tinok shenishba , it might not be such an issue, but it seems that most people want to be machmir  across the board. So after Pesach , you basically have one or two options. Either you only buy from, or three options. You make sure to buy food that was only produced after Pesach , which you have to be able to figure out what that is, but that's option A. Option B is you buy from a location that is only owned by goyim  from beginning to end. And option three is you buy from somebody who did a mechira . So it's very simple if you go to a frum store, frum owned store, and you know that they did the mechira , like you went in Pesach  and you bought your kosher l’Pesach  products, and you also saw all the aisles that were blocked off, that those are machur le'nachri , so you know those are sold to a goy , and after Pesach , they open it all up and you can go and buy it. But not everyone wants to rely on that, and not that there's an issue with the actual mechira , it's all done k'das u'kdin , but some people don't want to rely on that, they only want to buy something that did not go through this leniency. But you also have places that are owned by non frum Yidden , and those places have been sold on some level, and even those are different levels of how those sales are done, and those are a little less of a darga . Now of course with all this, you need to speak to your rav , because the rav  is the one who understands all the sfeikos involved. We mentioned in the past two minutes around three, four sfeikos , and we could probably add in a few more sfeikos , people want to know how much after Pesach  can you assume that it's a new product, and can you go basar Rov  or not, there are a lot of sfeikos  involved, if they know the type of store, that type of product, there are certain stores that the way their ordering system works, is that when you buy a box of macaroni, the computer tells them box of macaroni was purchased, and therefore we have to get new macaroni from the distributor. So such a place, macaroni is going to move much faster than your wheat bran, because there are less people that are buying wheat bran, so wheat bran might sit on the shelf three months, but macaroni might be a turnover of a week. So these are all things that have to be taken into account. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: And one of the things that people are clearly concerned about, is that even if you show me a franchise, a big chain of supermarkets for example, without naming any specifically, that is owned by a non-Jew, but there's concern that let's say the distributors and those who are providing food are Jews, and the food may be arriving on Yom Tov , right? Isn't that part of the issue with going into some of the non-Jewish owned stores? R’ Yakov Teichman: Correct, so let's take a walk back for a minute, and let's say you have a Jewish owned store that sells their chametz on before Pesach , but they continue operating on Pesach , what's the halacha  with them? So R’ Moshe Feinstein zatza”l has a teshuva about it, and he says that even though that they are ganavim , gazlanim , but the mechira  is chal . So they sold their chametz  to a goy, and all their inventory was sold to a goy, but they continue doing business. So yes, the macaroni and the cereal, R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: business with those items, you mean? R’ Yakov Teichman: With those items, they're open to anyone, and there are non-Jews coming to buy, and they're making a profit, so they are stealing from the goy  that they did the mechira  with, but the mechira  was chal , so therefore the other products that they didn't sell, you can go and buy, you as a frum  Jew can go buy after Yom Tov . That only helps for product that was in the store before Pesach  started. It does not address what happens when they get new product in over Pesach , so that's something that has to be dealt with. So when you walk into a store, so you have a franchise, and you know that it's a goyishe  owned franchise, but they are being, the distributor that they are getting their products from maybe is owned by a yid. What do you do with that? So again, like we said, these are all sfeikos  involved, so one main important halacha  to remember about sfeikos  is that it has to be efshar l'vrurei b'kal . You have to be able to find out easily, exactly what easily is, you'll speak to your Rav  and he'll tell you. There's a lot of information that's available online, public information, and for sure 15 years ago, a lot, a lot of information was available online, and you could see who the CEO is, who actually owns it, you can go do a Google search, and there's a lot of information available, and you can even see store X is getting from distributor Y, and you can connect the dots, and you can see there's an issue. As years go on, there's more and more privacy rights, and there's less and less information available online. So there's definitely, that issue has been a little bit mitigated, not to say that it's 100% muttar , but if you're not able to be mevarer it 100%, then the leniency is much more, so there's much more sfeikos  involved. So even though, let's say I knew that a certain store 10 years ago was being supplied by X distributor that's Jewish-owned, and there was a mechira , maybe the mechira  was not so lechatchila , and I didn't want to rely on it, so that store 10 years ago, I knew it was being supplied by this distributor. There has been information since then that has been cut off. The distributor has taken off all their information from online. It's no longer public information. There's no way for me to ascertain if they're actually getting from that distributor or not. So that's more of a safek . We could say that maybe I have, for 20 years they were getting, why should I believe that they're not getting from them anymore? Happens to be that yesterday, I went into a local store, a chain store, and for many years they were getting from a certain distributor, a well-known Jewish distributor that did a mechira , but it's not lechatchila d ike   mechira , and I asked them if they're still getting from them, and they notified me that in the past year and a half, they cut off all ties from that distributor, and they're only doing in-house distribution, and they are 100% non-Jewish-owned. So this is information that you need to keep on top of, and like we say, information is relevant only for that year. We had multiple meetings among the committee in the past few months to come out with a clear list, and as time goes on, every day goes on, there's more information. Different information from last year, for example, last year there was a certain chain of stores, Albertsons. Albertsons is well known, and Albertsons owns, I think, around 10 subsidiaries that, maybe not in this local area, but across the country, that it's relevant. 2% was owned by Jewish people, frum  Jewish people, and they did a mechira , and we'll talk about that type of mechira  in a minute, but there's a mechira , and they will continue to be open on Pesach , so some people didn't necessarily want to be someich  on that mechira . I understand, it's 2%, and there's a makom to be machmir for those who want, but as of this year, they sold us all their shares, so there's no longer a major shareholder that's a Yid . There might be somebody who owns stocks, but not in any way that would affect the mechiras chametz  or the chametz she'avar alav haPesach . R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Now, as far as the AKO committee list, when you list, just for example, if Walmart is on the list, I could go buy food at Walmart without being concerned at all about a Jewish distributor? R’ Yakov Teichman: Correct. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: It means that you'll be m'varer ? R’ Yakov Teichman: Well, so the list has, we'll see this year how many categories it has, but it typically has between five and eight categories, and those categories are 100% Jewish owned, owned by non-Jews, but it is, the distributor comes from a Jew that does a mechira , then there could be a different one that there's franchises that some are owned by Jews and some are not owned by Jews. There's a whole list, and you'll go through, and it's clearly delineated where it falls. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Well, what's interesting listening to this conversation, listening to you to describe these achievements by the AKO post- Pesach  committee is that when I was younger, I remember for years in Brooklyn, just because that's where I grew up, I remember people would go into the local grocery that was owned by a goy , and the owner would give them permission to label certain items or to put a siman , and this way when they would come after Pesach , they would know that those items were there on Pesach , and you know, they had this system in place. In Monsey, for example, for many years, my father-in-law used to go to the local ShopRite, and he was in charge of negotiating and speaking to the owners of the supermarket as to what was coming in, what was not coming in, kind of to regulate it on an individual basis, one supermarket or one grocery store and things of that sort. Now it seems like there's more of a global effort to regulate and control and provide information to people, just interesting to witness how it's transformed over the years. R’ Yakov Teichman: Right, so it's very important that you bring that up because that is true and that's still going on, and in Lakewood, there's by the Lakewood shoprite, there's somebody who takes care every year to set aside a couple of pallets of flour and I think maybe macaroni and cereals, a few staples that they buy before Pesach , and they put it aside in the back, and it's owned by that store that's not Jewish-owned, and then right after Pesach , they bring it out, and that was, you know, that's owned by a Goy , and there's no question about that, it wasn't owned by any Jewish hands at any time over Pesach . The point of this list is really geared towards Rabbanim . We are in 2025, and we know that anything that you're going to put out to anybody is going to be for the entire world, so we try to be as clear as possible, R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Another interesting component of this conversation, whenever it comes up every year, is the, it's kind of a balance, and I hear people always debate this, it's like one of their favorite post- Pesach  topics, and that is, am I, should I be not relying on a mechira , versus, vehechzakta bo and helping my fellow yid who owns a grocery or a supermarket. I'm curious from your standpoint, do people come to you with that question, okay, should I be not to rely on a mechira , and go buy by a non-Jewish-owned store, or should I better go to my local supermarket, who engages the services of a reputable rav, and does a real mechira , but lemaase, I get to help my fellow Jew, and give him the parnassah , you know, I know that this is part of the conversation. R’ Yakov Teichman: So this is part of the conversation, and when people ask me, I say you should speak to your local rav, you should know who he is, and it might be the guy sitting next to you in shul, who needs your assistance, and you don't even realize that you're helping him out by patronizing his store, you know, there's no question about it. But I do want to bring another point to the forefront that is important to keep in mind. So let's say you have a shutfus between a Yid  and a Goy . So you have a corporation that's owned by 40% Yidden  and 60% Goyim , and they're a distributor, or whatever it is. So what is the halacha in that case? So R’ Yitzchok Elchonon Spector  brings down in his teshuvos , he brings down that you can go basar rov , and you could assume that what you're eating is from the Goy , and you have no problem. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Meaning, in this case, the Yid would not have to sell his portion of the company. R’ Yakov Teichman: Correct. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: And it's not considered chametz she'avar alav haPesach , when you pick up an item from that company, you rely on the rov . R’ Yakov Teichman: Exactly. And they say this in the name of, R’ Shimon Eider said this in the name of a Rav Aharon Kotler  zatza”l so in Lakewood, a lot of the poskim  go with this psak . Other people have different mahalchei hapsak , but this is one of the sfeikos  that's important to keep in mind. Another thing we have to understand is the mechira . So we spoke about a mechira , a standard mechira  that you do with your rov . What happens if you have a Yid , he's not so frum , and he's not willing to close down his company over Yom Tov , or he's not able to close down. He's a guy sitting next to you in shul , and he's davening three times a day, and he's going to minyan , but he has Amazon business. And if you close down your Amazon business, he'll lose his whole business. Well, what is his option? What is he supposed to do? So there's an option out there that, and I'm not getting involved whether it's a lechatchila  or bedieved , but it's just to understand what people are going through and what they have to do. There is an option there that they not only do they sell the chametz , but they sell the business also. So therefore, by selling the business, so if I'm selling to John the Goy , so now besides the fact that I sold him $5 million of actual chametz , but I also sold him the company. So now for the next eight days or 10 days or 14 days, however long I make that mechira  on the business, I sell him the business and all the operations of business have to do with him. So he has the right to buy and sell, and whatever is done in the operations of business belongs to him only. And since it belongs to him, there's no problem. As you can understand, that's not the same lechatchila  as when you sell and you have nothing to do with the chametz . Because the chametz , the operations to continue continuously going. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: And it's earning profit. R’ Yakov Teichman: And they're earning profit. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: So the Goy  doesn't keep the profit after Yom Tov , or does he? R’ Yakov Teichman: So there are different levels of mechira , different ways. Every rav  has his way of doing it, and you have to speak to each rav  to find out. Some do a $20 profit because they say, listen, we cancel out. Yes, you made a lot of profit over eight, 10 days, whatever it is. But listen, there's a large overhead. We got to pay for electricity. We got to pay for insurance. And you do a deal for only 10 days, and the insurance you have to pay is very high. We could play around with the numbers to basically cancel it out. Others, R’ Belsky Zatzal  had a mehalach that he said that we have to put it to three arbitrators that are not related to the company to go through all the numbers. And they decide how much. They decide. But if you don't do it within 72 hours after Pesach , then you're going to agree to accept $100 to buy it back, or something like that. So to give them that caveat, if they want to go through the whole arbitrary, to arbiters, which is going to be a big deal, or to just accept the money. And as you can assume, in all the years of everyone doing this, the goy just accepts the money in lieu of going through that whole exercise. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: We thank you, and we thank the rest of the AKO committee for their efforts in providing information. We always say an educated consumer is the best customer. That's what we try to do here at Kashrus Awareness , is educate people, provide them with the information that they could then take to their rav and their moreh derech . So thank you for all your efforts on behalf of Klal Yisrael . R’ Yakov Teichman: My pleasure. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Thank you for being here.

Just Yet... Many people won't sell chometz gamur. Does that mean i need to throw out a closed bottle of ketchup? Rabbi Yakov Teichman - Rabbinic Coordinator at the OK, helps us decipher those hard to read ingredient panels. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah Anytime. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rabbi Yakov Teichman, Rabbinic Coordinator at OK Kosher and a member of the AKO Post- Pesach Committee. Is that the right description? R’ Yakov Teichman: Yes. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: So today I'd like to discuss with you a very specific topic and that is the topic of Chametz Gomur . We very often hear before Pesach , after Pesach  people will say I sell chametz,  but I don't sell chametz gomur . What is considered chametz gomur?  and as a related question when people do get rid of products before Pesach as far as chametz gomur  before Pesach , what items do they have to get rid of and what items may they mistakenly believe to be chametz  when it's really not? R’ Yakov Teichman: Ok so chametz  everyone knows is only from the five grains. Five grains means wheat, barley, oats, spelt and rye. If you have buckwheat, kasha , that's not chametz . If you have rice, it's not chametz . Millet, none of these things are chametz . It has to be kept in mind what is actually chametz  only from the five grains. Not getting involved in the machlokes  of what is included in wheat and then you can go to the matzah  bakeries and find out. Einkorn, not einkorn, that we leave on the side but let's assume these five grains and whatever their subsidiary is exactly what's included in these five grains. Obviously if you have the five grains and they're made into bread, cookies, cereal, spaghetti, all those things are 100% chametz gomur . In America you have a lot of products or anywhere you have a lot of products and a lot of ingredients and you look at the ingredient panel and you usually get a cross-eyed after two lines. Usually about five, six, seven, eight lines. Most people can't even read them or understand what the ingredients are. So how much of these are chametz gomur ? So we have to keep in mind where are you located. If you're located in America, a lot of the vinegar that's coming, most, 99% of the vinegar in America is not chametz derived. It's coming from corn. If it's corn derived, so corn is kitniyos . You don't have to sell kitniyos , you can keep it, you don't have to sell it. Somebody's choshesh , maybe there's a little bit of chametz gomur  in there, fine, so you could sell al hachashash . Let's say you have a certain type of mustard and in there it says barley extract. I don't even know if barley extract exists in mustard, but let's just say. It's a second class ingredient. It's a taruves chametz . Rov of this for sure is going to be kitniyos  or innocuous legabei Pesach . There's no reason why somebody shouldn't be able to sell it. No reason you have, you know, in Costco closet you may have many, many closed bottles of ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: even vinegar, even plain vinegar, which you're saying is predominantly not made from grain. R’ Yakov Teichman: Not from five grains. Corn is also grain. So not from the five grains and you could assume in America that's where it's made from. Therefore, there's no reason not to sell it. You probably don't even have to sell it. You're not sure, so you can sell it. A lot of people sell kitniyos , they want to be 100% sure. But chametz gomur , it definitely isn't. You have to look at everything. Everything that you get. How much, what's the percentage of it that's chametz  and what's the percentage of it that's not chametz . You're going to have a rov of kitniyos , there's a big tzad, that's not considered chametz gomur . If you have, let's say, a lot of schnapps, as long as it's 51% corn, even though the other 49% might be from wheat or from rye or whatever it is, so it's not chametz gomur  and you could sell it. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: I think this is an important conversation. You know, I'll tell you a Hatorah Chassa Al Mamonum   Shel Yisrael , and people, well-meaning people, very often before Pesach , they'll go to their fridge for sure, especially if it's open, they don't want to leave it over Pesach , that I understand. But they'll often go to their garage or their closet, wherever they store things, and they have closed bottles of ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, so on and so forth, condiments, and they see vinegar in the ingredient panel, and right away they panic and say, oh, we have to get rid of it, and they throw it out. And really, as you're saying, it's not necessary. At worst, you could include it as part of your mechira . At best, it's not chametz at all. It might be kitniyos , in which case you could just leave it, maybe cover it up so that people don't mistakenly use it on Pesach . But I think this is a very instructive conversation for people to know, so that they could be aware of. R’ Yakov Teichman: So let's say you have something like oatmeal, right? So quick oats, like people, they have oatmeal and they want to use it in their baking or whatever it is. So how are oats made? Obviously, they grow from the ground, but how are they processed? So they use water to cut them and to parboil them or whatever it is. Those are going to be chametz gomer . That's chametz gomer , right. So even if you get, you know, usually you see beans or dry beans, you assume that nothing happened to it. Oats, even though it's dry and it's coming in a can, it touched water already. It touched water. In a serious way, and therefore it's going to be chametz gomur . R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Right, so oatmeal is chametz , obviously, like you said, bread products, pretzels, we'll call them bonafide chametz products. Another common topic, which may be a whole separate discussion, but I'll mention it here, about people who don't sell chametz gomur  is schnapps. Because schnapps is something that even people don't feel comfortable selling chametz , but they do sell schnapps. Why is that? R’ Yakov Teichman: So there are one or two reasons. Either they want to sell because they don't want to be someich on mechirah unless it's a hefsid merubah . And for schnapps, they consider it hefsid merubah  its more of an expensive item. You know, they might have got it as a present, an expensive bottle, and they don't want to spill it out, or they don't have a neighbor to give it to. That's one reason. Another reason is that there are some shittas  that hold that if it's only zeya ba'alma , that it's not considered chametz gomur . It doesn't mean that you can go and eat or drink it on Pesach! That's not what we're talking about. We’re talking about whether it’s included in the din of chametz gomer , legabei  the din of selling it over Pesach . Very good. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Thank you, Rabbi Teichman.

Labeled In China Part 2 of our travels to China with Rabbi Binyamin Berkowitz - Kashrus Administrator at the KOF-K, focuses on the labeling aspect of Chinese products. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah Anytime. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rabbi Binyamin Berkowitz, Rabbinic Coordinator for China and the Far East for the KOF-K. Thank you Rabbi Berkowitz for joining us. I'm sure the most common question is what I'm going to ask next and that's labeling. You know over here in the United States there are laws about mislabeling. If you mislabel something or you label something without authenticity, so there's a penalty to be paid. Does such a thing exist in China that would serve as a deterrent to a company from let's say taking a kosher label and placing it in an unauthorized fashion on a product? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: Right, so there are but it's definitely a little bit of a bigger challenge there as opposed to here. A lot of when that comes out is we try to take action over here because they're importing it here. So, they usually have an arm here that we can deal with. In other words, if a company in China is importing to the United States, they usually have an export arm and they have an import arm that they're importing here, and we'll be able to deal with the company that's on this end of it. But I will mention is that a lot of times because we're dealing with ingredients, we're not necessarily dealing with a retail product that has, let's say, the kosher symbol on it. Often, it's just that this company is a certified company and they're basing that off of their certification that they can now import it here. So there's control in the fact that it's only certified so as long as that certificate is a valid certificate as opposed to like what we're used to in a retail item, where we see the symbols and we know it's kosher. So, we have to protect that symbol and make sure that nobody used that symbol improperly. As opposed to in China, very often it's just based on the fact that this is a kosher certified company. Similar to almost like, let's say, a food service or a restaurant. A restaurant is very often based on the fact that it has a certificate. There's no symbol on every product. So, when something's coming from China, it's more based on the fact that this is a certified company so it's not so much improper use of the symbol because they don't necessarily use the symbol. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Are there any dedicated kosher facilities in China that don't have to be kosher? That are literally just producing? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: Most of our facilities are, like I say, national facilities are almost always purely kosher. Correct. We do some special supervisions but most of the time it's a purely kosher factory. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Another comment you'll hear from people, again it's coming from total conjecture, especially because many, many candies are made in China. You'll hear people say or at least suggest that somebody did something unhealthy about it. There's no FDA in China. What could you speak to about that without getting us in trouble here? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: I don't know all the rules of FDA but anything, first of all, FDA does have a branch there. And anything that comes into the United States needs to be approved. It has to be approved. And another point is, like I said, we're certifying a lot of ingredients that are coming here. So even if you get a candy that's made in the United States or in Europe or in Israel or almost anywhere, there's a very good chance that some of those ingredients, some of those flavors are coming from China. Hard to get away from that. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Hard to get away from China. But to answer the question itself, you're saying that there is accountability there? They have their own FDA? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: Like I said, our FDA doesn't have to approve anything that comes from China to here. So whatever our FDA does. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: So what do they do? The FDA from the United States, they do spot checks? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: I can't say for sure because I've never seen them. But that's how I understand that they do have branches there and they do do checking. And anything that comes into the United States has to be approved. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Got it. Going back to labeling for a second. How do you maintain control, especially because I imagine your packaging and your labels are all there in the factory and then you leave. How do you maintain control over that, that it shouldn't be used in an unauthorized way? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: Right. So, again, we don't put the symbol on most of the products for that reason because it's very difficult to control. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: So what do you do? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: It has to have the factory name. We're talking about a non-retail item, an industrial item. Right. It's going to go to a factory anyways, a different factory. So it'll just have the name of the factory and the product name. And a lot number and there's certain Chinese codes that they have that are put on. So all these are. And that's how we track it. Not by the symbol. Not by the symbol, correct. Like you said, if we would do it by the symbol, so then we lose control of the symbol. They will sometimes put the symbol on and then when the factory does lose its certification, we have to follow up and make sure that they get rid of all their labels, which is, by the way, something that happens in the United States as well. If a company loses its certification. You have to make sure that they don't continue to use. Right. That's what I'm saying. It's not so different than the United States. It's just, again, there's this perception. It's a foreign country. Yeah, it's a foreign country. It's harder to be there. Perhaps they're less than locally. I'm not exactly sure, but that's why people wonder about that. Which is why we try to keep the kashrus as simple as possible for those reasons. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: What else did you want to discuss regarding China? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: So we were mentioning labels. So another interesting thing with labels is what we call bright stock. I don't know if you're familiar, but bright stock basically means all they put on it is the product name because they're thinking they could sell it to this one and they'll label it this way or they'll sell it to different companies and they'll be able to label it. So that's problematic because if it's bright stock, we have no way of verifying that it comes from the kosher company. Like we said, we're basing our kashrus on it's coming from That manufacturing facility and the lot number and so on. Exactly. We're basing it on that, and now we don't have that. So a lot of this is, first of all, educating the companies that if you're doing bright stock, that's fine, but you can consider it not kosher. We're not going to be able to certify it. First of all, and making companies here aware of it, making sure that they're looking out, making sure that things are not coming in as bright stock. So that's another challenge. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: And I imagine bright stock would be an issue here in the United States as well, not just R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: It's the same issue. It's a common thing in China because they're looking to Especially if, let's say, you're making flavor chemicals, they have a tremendous shelf life. And you don't sell everything that you need to sell, you'll be very happy They want to be able to sell it to different companies. Exactly, to sell it off to other companies. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Now, one more question, a little less related to the kashrus of it, and more related to the geopolitical atmosphere. We hear so much about China. You know, during President Trump's first term, he would talk about China and China and China. And now, we're talking during his second term. You know, you also hear a lot about China and tariffs and different types of things. I'm curious how the geopolitical atmosphere actually impacts people traveling to China, the safety of doing so, and the impact on businesses. Do you see that from your perspective? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: I think since COVID, things have changed. There's definitely less traveling going on to China. So, you feel more of like when you do travel, you feel a little bit more like a foreigner than you used to. So, it's really just that there's less traveling going on. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: It's not like you're going to Wuhan, right? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: No. I haven't been there since COVID, not for any real reason. I haven't been there, but no, it's a relatively safe country. As far as, you know, as long as you don't like any other foreign country, you don't do anything wrong when you follow the rules. But there's definitely you feel less foreigners around. That you definitely feel. But other than that, it's actually the transportation in the country is easier than here. They have an amazing train system, and their planes are very safe. So, it's definitely a safe country to travel in. Most of the neighbors are safe. You know, you stay in a decent hotel. So, there usually isn't much of a problem. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: And what do you do about, just curious, kosher food, minyanim, things like that? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: There are Chabads around. So, the Chabads also have suffered because of COVID. There's less traveling. There's Chabad, and you carry it in your suitcase like any other good tourist traveler. So, some fruits and vegetables. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Very interesting. You've taken us on a fascinating journey. I must say, you've piqued my interest enough that I would actually want to go and see it myself. But for now, this will have to do. So, Rabbi Berkowitz, thank you for joining us. Thank you for sharing your experiences about China. And maybe in the future we'll get to talk to you if you have any updates. Sure. Thank you so much for being here. R’ Binyamin Berkowitz: Pleasure.

Soy Many Questions Today we travel to China with Rabbi Binyamin Berkowitz - Kashrus Administrator at the KOF-K. Come along as we explore the process of certifying factories in China. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus, presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah Anytime. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rabbi Binyamin Berkowitz, Rabbinic Coordinator for China and the Far East for the KOF-K. Thank you Rabbi Berkowitz for joining us. Pleasure to be here. We've wanted to speak to you for quite a while about China specifically, which is kind of your forte, your expertise. We get a lot of questions about products made in China, about Kashrus supervision in China. People wonder how is it even possible to supervise a product, no less a factory in China. And you have extensive experience, over a decade that you're doing this. So walk us through what it means when a Kashrus organization like the KOF-K takes on the responsibility of supervising a product in China. R’ Binyamin Berkowitz Sure. So first of all, there's really two types of Kashrus that's done in China. There's what's called special supervision, which would be, let's say, for a candy, for a very specific product. And then there's more of a general, for ingredients. So as far as it comes to specific products, that's usually done by what we'd call more the Haimeshe Hechsherim, or some of the Israeli Hechsherim, the Badatz, the Eidah Hachareidis and others. They'll go into a factory or they'll have a customer who's interested in going into a factory. And they'll make a product, let's say a candy or something like that. And they'll have a Mashgiach come in, assess the situation. If they have to Kasher, they'll Kasher, they'll approve all the ingredients. And you pretty much have a Mashgiach there for the whole production. And once the production is over, they control the labels, they check the labels, they make sure it has the proper labels. And then they leave the factory, and then the factory goes on and does whatever it does. As far as, let's say, the more national Hashgachas, such as us by the Kof-K, or any of the other nationals, OU, Star-K, et cetera, et cetera. So we mostly do what you would call ingredients. What I mean by ingredients or by processing aids, that could be anything like flavor chemicals, which is a whole discussion. And then it could be something like a processing aid could be an enzyme. We certify a lot of enzymes. It's more like a factory that does one type of product, meaning they might do a lot of things. They might do a lot of flavor chemicals. They might do several types of enzymes. And then we have companies that are even simpler. Believe it or not, we have companies that do active carbon, which you can ask, why does active carbon need Hashgacha? We can talk about that. Then you have companies that are doing simple things like nuts. Or you could have vegetables, canneries, which are just doing some basic tomato sauce, et cetera, et cetera. More the ingredients that are exported to America, to Europe, to Israel. So those are really the two types of Hashgachas that are done. So when it comes to the type of Hashgacha that we do, which is mostly ingredients. So the first question, yes, so how can we give Hashgacha on such a place? So really the first... R’ Yitzchok Hisiger You know, before you answer, I want to add something to the question. And tell me if I'm wrong. Maybe it's just my perception of how people perceive things. But from speaking to people, people hear China and they think they have a certain way of looking at it. Either it's like the Wild West out there. It's not organized. There's no accountability. I think there's a certain perception among the Hamon Am about China. So is that an accurate perception and is that a challenge? Or is there a total misconception about what's really going on? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz Obviously any conception, there's always some truth to it. But that's why when you come into a factory, that's the first question you have to ask yourself. Is this something that we can reasonably assume that there won't be any chaos? And it'll be something that we could control. Because if you can't control it, then there's going to be something that they're going to do that's going to... R’ Yitzchok Hisiger So that's already a red flag, right? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz That's already a red flag. So how do we go about that? So actually the first thing we do is we look at what is this company making? What are they doing? It's not so hard to find out, believe it or not, because they're very open about it. You can go onto their website and they'll advertise exactly what they're making. If you see that they're making things that are very questionable, how they could be kosher, or they have certain ingredients or certain products that will use certain ingredients, so that's a red flag. We wouldn't even go into such a factory to start with. So that's first of all. A lot of what it has to do is being able to assess, is this a simple enough factory for us to go in and reasonably assume that we can do Kashrus there? There's definitely something to the conception. Someone just asked me last night, what does it mean when something is made in the PRC? So obviously sometimes people are trying to cover up, because PRC is People's Republic of China, so people are trying to show that they're trying to at least cover up a little bit where it's made. But the bottom line is that that's how we go in. The first thing is we make an assessment when we get an application. We look over the application. Obviously we don't only trust the application. We look at what they're claiming they make. Does this make sense? Is it possible to do it this way? And if it makes sense, then that's something that we feel that we can reasonably go in and be able to give a kosher for that. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger So once you do your kind of pre-visit research, now you actually send a mashgiach down to China? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz Correct. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger And he has to stay there for an extended period of time? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz No. So like we said, we're talking about the simpler things. A lot of it is, as well as hashgacha that's done here, it's based on visitation, meaning you'll go in and you'll evaluate that this is something that can reasonably be given hashgacha, because we can assume that nothing is changing here. We'll come in, we'll do spot checks, but the basic assumption is that things aren't going to change here. This is all they're producing. There's not much else they could do here, and therefore we can reasonably assume that it'll stay kosher. And the other point to make is that in China, as opposed to in the United States, they really don't understand what kosher is, and they really don't even know. One of the advantages is they don't always know what to hide. They're much more open about those things. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger You mean, it's not necessarily a chisaron. It might even be a mailah because they don't even know what to manipulate. R’ Binyamin Berkowitz They don't understand what exactly to look for. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger So you said sometimes right. Sometimes actually less educated is better, ironically. R’ Binyamin Berkowitz But what we do is we do some education to explain to them what the rules are, and that's one thing that they're usually very good at is when you tell them what the rules are, they'll usually, a company which is used to regulations will follow the rules. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger What else could you tell us that we didn't touch on as far as the supervision of these products? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz So just we were talking about when a mashgiach goes into a factory. So just it's interesting. There are a few things that you wouldn't commonly think that you have to look for that a mashgiach looks for in a factory in China. So in China, the way it works is often you have, sometimes you have a factory that's run on its own, meaning it's self-contained, and sometimes you have a factory that can be in a large industrial area. So the first thing, one of the things you have to look for is steam. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger Shared steam? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz Is there anything shared? It could be a common thing. And what's very interesting is it's one of the first Chinese words I learned was boiler because every time I would ask a Chinese person where your boiler is, they were very confused. And the reason why they're confused is they don't even view that that has anything to do with the kosher process or the process at all. So they don't understand why do you need to see a boiler. So that's something that you always have to check out and be aware of, that is this boiler shared? Is this something shared by a large industrial area? And if it is, who else is in that area? So that's one thing. And another interesting thing is that, you know, sometimes we think that hashgachah is just what's in the factory. So we had a case, often in China, the way that it works, if you have a factory, let's say, doing an extract, an herbal extract, or doing a sweetener, so it will be right near the crop. So if that's where the farms are, so they'll have a factory near the farm. So a popular item now is monk fruit extract. Okay, so monk fruit extract is considered like a healthier sweetener. It's anywhere between 100 to 250 times sweeter than sugar. So it's very sweet. And it's cultivated in China, in specific regions, like the southern mountainous regions of China. And a mashgiach was going to a plant. Like I said, it was right near the fruits are right near the plant. And he'd gone a few times. And he mentioned to me, you know, it's very interesting, but I noticed that the plants are cut down every year or two, and they plant new plants. So, I mean, he was calling them trees. And so he said they seem to be cutting down the trees. So isn't that orlah? Why don't we have to be worried that maybe, you know, we were certifying something that's orlah? So we thought about it, and it turned out we researched it, and we call it a monk fruit, but it's actually a vegetable. So it's more of a vine. Not a tree. What was happening really was that every few years they were dying out, and they were planting new ones. But just an example how, you know, you think you just have to certify in the factory, and here this is something that was out there. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger Now you mentioned about certifying carbon before, which sounded very interesting. What is carbon typically used for? R’ Binyamin Berkowitz So active carbon is used in filtration. In other words, if you're making a product and you need to clean it to filter it out, make an extract. So an extract involves using a solvent, which means you're taking, let's say, an herb, and you want to extract out of that herb, you want to extract out the taste, the nutrients, all the flavors, and you'll use, let's say, ethanol, alcohol, and there could be other processing aids they use, and you want to be able to filter it out. So active carbon is used. Really, if you look at a common filter even in a refrigerator for water, there is carbon involved also. So you'll use carbon in order to filter that out. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger What does carbon actually do? Meaning carbon is like, you know, coal. They'll take coal, and there's a process just to mill it in a certain way. Then that's used in filtration. It'll filter it out. It has to also be held from going. It'll go through that in order to filter it out, and it comes out the other side. Just like if you want to look at, you know, a refrigerator filter. The water goes through it. There's something in there that's filtering, and it comes right out the other side. R’ Binyamin Berkowitz Got it. So you're saying it is certified because? R’ Yitzchok Hisiger We have many that are certified, and usually it's never a problem. The reason I was mentioning it is just recently someone brought to my attention that or he questioned it. There was a factory that was marketing that they were making another product, which was clearly not kosher. So the question was how was that possible, and Baruch Hashem, when we did our inspection, we already knew what the issue was, and it was a completely separate workshop, no connection at all, no equipment connection, no connection as far as, you know, steam, and not even a possibility that they could be connected. But had we not done our inspection and seen that, then that's something that we could have wondered how that is possible. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger Rabbi Berkowitz, thank you for joining us. Thank you for sharing your experiences about China, and thank you so much for being here. R’ Binyamin Berkowitz Pleasure.

What can be wrong with canned corn? All the ingredients are kosher. Let's listen to Rabbi Mordechai Stareshefsky a Rabbinic Coordinator at the OU as he explains some potential issues with the most basic food items. This serves as a reminder why one should always ensure that there is a good hechsher on everything they buy. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk  Kashrus , presented by the  Kashrus  Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah  Anytime. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rabbi Mordechai Stareshefski, Rabbinate Coordinator at the Orthodox Union. Thank you Rabbi Stareshefski for joining us once again. R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky Good to be here, thank you. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger We'd like to discuss today the topic of retorts. It has tremendous ramifications in the field of Kashrus . For those of us who have never been to one of these large factories, we may not have seen a retort, we may not even know what it is. Tell us what it is and then we'll talk about the  halachic  details. R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky So there's different types of retorts. Let's talk about first the purpose of a retort. A retort is, there's two ways of cooking food. Food has to be cooked obviously, some food is not edible without cooking, but a lot of food has to be cooked as a preservative to make sure it's shelf-stable, to make sure that the bacteria, the pathogens have been killed. A lot of times that cooking process is done in a retort. A retort is a steam cooker, which means that it's done under pressure because steam is by definition is under pressure. There's different types of retorts. They're all the same principle, it's cooked with steam if under pressure. The most common retort you'll find is a batch retort, which means that these cans or you can have fruit cups, they're loaded, they're sealed, but the point is that the product is already sealed. Like canned vegetables. Canned vegetables. Canned fruits. Right. The can, already done, they go through into this chamber called the retort. It looks like, if anybody ever saw a picture of a World War II type of submarine, like a long tube, you put the torpedo in, so it looks like that, this round tube, and I have a plant actually on the Idaho-Oregon border. They actually have an old-fashioned one, the technology is about 100 years old, it works. They actually go take the retort and spin that wheel around to pressurize it. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger Manually? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky Manually. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Because labor's cheap. Today, most retorts are done, even batch retorts, are done by a robot. It's a whole cart, a whole train, the door opens up automatically, the goes in. Shoots it through? Shoots it in, there's like four or five baskets that go in, seals it, and then the robot moves on to the next one. Obviously much more efficient that way, but the point is it goes in, it's sealed, and it's cooked with steam. There’s another type of retort, which is only the really big companies have this. It's called a continuous feed autoclave, continuous feed hydrostatic retort. And what a hydrostatic retort is, is it has hundreds of thousands of cans at a time. It goes in this big chain through a water leg. Which means water there? There's water, no, there's steam in the middle, there's different chambers. So steam obviously is under pressure, and the cooking section is the steam section. The water on both sides is to make it heavier than the steam, that the steam shouldn't blow out, keeps it contained, so the cans go through. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger And that makes it hotter? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky No, it doesn't make it hotter, it just makes that the steam is contained, because it's not under pressure. You know, when you have just the steam in one batch retort, so all the steam there, it's being held in place by the metal. Here the steam has to be held in place because the steam is always looking to blow out. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger So it cooks faster that way? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky In the steam it cooks faster because it goes up like 280 degrees, but the water is there to hold it in place. It goes through in this, the in leg and the out leg, first the in leg, then the in feed, then it goes through another. This is about six stories high. You drive to a plant, I went to Tennessee, drive up there, it's like this smoke billowing out the top, this big building, eventually the snow, that is a hydrostatic retort. So when you have, there's a lot of interesting  halacha , Shailos , that come out from a retort. First of all, it goes through, some plants can even have a double chain. So you can have your canned corn, which is like, what can be wrong with corn? Yeah, but it might be sharing, actually it might be sharing the steam, not just the steam, it can actually be in the water, the water is also hot. You're going into the steam and actually sharing a chain. With another product that may not be kosher. So we're talking about  bliyos , in a  kli rishon , because the water is cooked. It's like they're sharing, the  bliyos  pass through the shach, the  taz , siman pey daled etc. So retorts, one interesting thing, which one of our experts, one of our experts discovered is that we have a plant that does pork and beans. So of course they  kasher , we don't certify the pork and beans. We  kasher  it and then we just certify the beans. Discovered that in one of these retorts, the pressure cooling section, that means that water, after it's cooked, they have to cool down those cans. So water gets down, water sprays on the cans, makes the cans cold, and in turn the water gets hot. That water has to be cooled off. So they came up with an ingenious arrangement that water coming into the plant, which is going to be used for the sauce, called city water, regular water, you open up a tap, coming from the city, it's ambient, which means in kashrus  terminology, plant terminology, which means it's room temperature ambient, and they want to get that hot, and they want to get this water cold. So it runs against, it doesn't touch each other, but it runs against, it's called a heat exchanger, and heat pierces from one to the other and it cools it off. A heat exchanger is actually off topic a little bit. There's an ethanol plant in Nebraska that I was by, so ethanol is made from the corn, so it goes through first a hydro heater, with water, with an enzyme, to make it very hot, and to start the alpha amylase, to start acting on the sugar, to start breaking it down. Then it goes to be fermented in a beer, and a beer can be three quarters of a million gallon tank, a few. So it has to be cooled off to go into the beer. Then from beer, if it's fermented, it has to go for distillation to make it, without going t through how it gets distilled, it has to get hot again. So a little heat exchanger, coming from hydro heater to the beer, it has to be cooled, and from beer to the still, it has to be hot. That little heat exchanger saves the plant six million dollars a year in utilities, just by having them cooled down and heated up. Fascinating topic, heat exchangers. In this case... R’ Yitzchok Hisiger So as a general rule, when you have a cross-exchanging heat in such a case, where you have kosher and non-kosher, I imagine it's a problem, right? It's a real problem, yeah. So you have to  kasher  in between, or what do you typically do? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky Typically the OU is going to flush, we don't  kasher the boiler, it's a technical discussion based on a pri megadim, when we say chanan , but not for this forum. But in this case, of course we have to  kasher , we couldn't do it at those temperatures, we had to lower it. At a lower temperature. So that's the general parsha of a retort. There are many different concerns with a retort. For example, even take pork and beans. If you take pork, how much pork actually goes into the bean can? Not very much. But there's a concept called chanan – R’ Yitzchok Hisiger chaticha naaseis neveila , which means, tell our viewers... R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky Let's say you have, for example, a 59 ounce container of orange juice. Let's say you have milk in there, and a schnapps cup of chicken soup gets poured into there, so it's not batul, because you need 60 times the amount to be batul. It comes in a drop below that, it's only 59 times the amount. So if you would not say  Chatichah Na'aseh Nevelah , let's say that orange juice container falls into something else, a few gallons. If you don't say  Chatichah Na'aseh Nevelah , all you have in the bottle is that one ounce. It's a small amount. Once you say Chatichah Na'aseh Nevelah , the orange juice itself now is treif. The whole thing becomes problematic. So in a pork and beans plant, maybe the pork is very small, but then the can becomes also  Chatichah Na'aseh Nevelah . And then once it goes, the source becomes also  Chatichah Na'aseh Nevelah . And that goes into the retort, that's going to  assur  the whole retort. So you end up with the cascading, exponentially  assuring  everything, and that's why you have to have an expert mashgiach  go into this plant to make sure that everything is done properly, kashered  properly. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger Right, like we always say, you can't just walk into a place and, oh, everything, the ingredients are kosher, the tube that it's going through is kosher. You really have to know the structure of such a facility. Any final thoughts on this, because I know you mentioned to me before, we were talking about acidic fruits and vegetables. High acid fruits and vegetables, which very often will be self-preserved. Talk about that and its ramifications as far as kashrut  is concerned. R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky Right, so we know that, for example, corn, beans, it's low acid, it goes into tomatoes, I'm not sure what acidity, but let's say watermelon, bananas, low acid, and it has to be, we know it has to be, it has to go through a kill step, like we say, to be heated to kill the pathogens. And that we know is going to be  halachic shailos  like we discussed. High acid fruits is... R’ Yitzchok Hisiger That would be, R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky let's say, peaches. Peaches, pineapple. So the pineapple, the fruit itself has enough acid in it and the source has enough acid that there is a thought that you're not going to need to do any kill step because the acid itself acts as a kill step. For example, vinegar, which is an acidic acid, there's enough vinegar in there. Vinegar plants don't have a cleaning step because vinegar is used as a cleanser. So there's enough acid, but I don't believe, I'm almost 100% positive in this, there's not enough acid in most of these fruits to act as a kill step. So it does need to go through, you know, they put in the potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate as preservatives, but even with that, it has to still go through a heat treatment. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger What's the relevance of the acidic level to  kashrut ? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky If it's a high acid, then you can be pretty confident that it didn't go through, and those ingredients are all  kosher , and it's high acid, you know, of course it's always ideal to buy with a  hechsher . Canned oranges, because oranges are very high acid. Pineapples, pears, peaches, let's say. Very often buy the little orange tidbits like that. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger You could buy that without  hashgacha ? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky No, so there's a few things you have to watch out for, I don't want to just not try this at home, you know, speaking in theory. More theory, okay. First of all, you have to check the ingredients, and not always if there's flavors in there that could be, you don't know what flavors. Flavors, additives, things like that. It could be a concern. Okay. We're talking just, let's say for example, just pineapples and syrup. Now, a lot of times, there's one trick that they use, they say natural, it has to be all natural syrup, but they don't want to put sugar in or high fructose corn syrup, so they just put in white grape juice. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger And that won't appear on the ingredient panel? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky It would. It would? It usually would. It usually would. So, that's something which you can't always assume that pineapples are, it's going to be  kosher , because a lot of times they'll use grape juice as a sweetener, white grape juice, which wouldn't be  kosher , it's stam yaynum. But let's say you know for sure, you can trust the ingredient list, and you know that it's not going to be, ingredients are fine. The issue is that if it's in a can, it usually goes through a retort. Then it went through a retort. That's the bottom line. Even a fruit cup, it doesn't go through a, see a fruit cup can't go through a steam retort. Glass bottles, for example, are also retorted. I had a company in Spain that I was by, they don't go, it's a glass bottle, if it goes through steam, the volatility of the steam will cause the glass to break. To break, right. So what you do is it goes through a retort, the steam goes into the bottom of the retort, and it heats up water, and the water sprays around the continuous spray. It's like a more gentle way of doing it, to protect the glass. But either way, it's over yad soledes, you have issues. Even the fruit cup, the plastic is going to be a spray retort. Interesting. And you have, now again, can I raise my right hand and say it's for sure  treif ? You know, chanan , let's say you don't say  chanan , the Rem”a, you don't say  chanan balach balach , hefsed meruba, me’eis le’eis, issur derabanan of  balach balach . There might be eitzos, you know, but we believe in kosher without compromise. Right. If you're stuck in some deserted island somewhere with only kosher ingredients, R’ Yitzchok Hisiger To summarize this conversation, first of all, everyone should try to buy canned vegetables and canned fruit with  hashgacha , obviously. That would be highly recommended. But I think the takeaway from this conversation is that you could go into a supermarket and see canned vegetables or canned fruits on a shelf. All the ingredients are kosher, everything looks good, but what you as a consumer may not know is that this can or container went through a retort and we don't know the kosher concerns that were in that retort. That's the takeaway here. And that's why... Maybe real kosher... Maybe real kosher issues might be nothing. Right. So, you know, once again, it's so enlightening to speak to someone like you and learn about this because once again, the lesson is you can't take anything for granted and you can't make assumptions. I think people, including myself, we very often make assumptions about things. We see something. Yeah, exactly. Or maybe you're just a  chumra , a very extreme chumra  over here. We have a real, real kosher concern. And if you don't know, then you don't know what you don't know. So it's very important to be educated on this. And once again, a fascinating topic that you've brought to the table here. So any final words on this? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky We covered everything. We covered everything. But in general, not just when it comes to these high acid fruits. In general, a person should buy, always buy something with reliable  hechsher . It's not enough to say, well, the  hechsher may not be reliable, but for this, what can be wrong with it? R’ Yitzchok Hisiger Right. You hear that often, very often. You hear people say, on orange juice or on canned fruit and vegetables, maybe I don't need as good of a  hashgacha , so to speak. R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky Mentioning orange juice. Orange juice is, because of the nature of the beast, most of the, you know, it's expensive to ship things around the country. So a lot of these big orange juice companies will just rent out space by different bottling facilities nearer to the market where they want to sell. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger Is that right? Even brand name orange juices? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky They'll bottle different places because it's more economical that way. Instead of trucking something from one side of the country, you might as well have a plant somewhere else, of course. And those plants can actually do grape juice, can do  treif things, and then  kasher . Those are shared facilities. You have to basically check it out. Very interesting. A pleasure being here as always. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger Thank you so much.

What Are The Facts? That shiny coating that can be found on anything from jellybeans to fruit to hard-wood flooring. What is it made of? Is it Kosher? Let's listen in to a fascinating (and slightly discomforting) discussion about Shellac otherwise known as confectioners glaze, with Rabbi Sholem Fishbane - Kashrus Administrator at the Chicago Rabbinical Council, and Executive Director of AKO. R’ Yitzy Hisiger: Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah Anytime. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, Executive Director of AKO and Kashrus Administrator of the Chicago Rabbinical Council. How are you Rabbi Fishbane? R’ Sholem Fishbane : Baruch Hashem , thank you for having me. R’ Yitzy Hisiger: Thanks again for being here. I'd like to discuss a topic that people may have a cursory knowledge of. They've heard the terms, but they don't really know what it is. So let's delve into it. And that is what we'll call shellac, otherwise known in the field as resinous glaze or confectioner's glaze. It's used very often in candies. Sometimes you'll even find it on fruit, which I hope you'll get into. Tell us, number one, what it is and why there's a Kashrus concern regarding its use. R’ Sholem Fishbane: Okay, yeah, sure. It's known in the industry as E904, but you're right, better known as shellac, confectioner's glaze, etc. And it comes from a lac bug. It actually comes from a bug where there's these little insects, female lac bug, that they suck the sap of the tree. It's found in India and Thailand. And it takes about 50,000 to 300,000, depending on the bug, to make about 2.2 pounds of it. Believe it or not, the word shellac doesn't mean shel lac from a lac. That's Hebrew now. Actually, the word lac in the Indian numbering system is 100,000. So it takes about 100,000 of these to get a small amount. And it was actually used for many years to help with the phonograph and the old record players. R’ Yitzy Hisiger: Really, is that right? R’ Sholem Fishbane: Yeah, and wood finishing and that type of thing. R’ Yitzy Hisiger: They would coat it. Right. That's where the word shellac of like a shine, shellac on the floor. R’ Sholem Fishbane: Right, so that's where it comes from. But then they discovered, hey, this could go well, does a great job if you put it on fruit, like you said, or candies and whatnot. And in order to do it, now, please know when it comes out, it's terrible tasting. So they have to put stuff into it in order to make it like a coating. And they put in water. They put in alcohol. They put in oleic acid or fatty acids, which could be a kashrus issue, soy or even dairy protein and whatnot to make it. And then they spray it on. And then it does. So there's really two sheilos . One is the actual shellac itself. And then there's the other things that go in. Because once it's dried off, some of these things are way over shishim it’s like 11% on the fatty acids. Those are the two sheilos  in halacha . Now, as you said, it's in candies. It is in candies. And believe it or not, there's a pretty long list of fruits that they'll spray it on to give it. It does two things. It makes it shiny, appealing to eat. And it holds in the water. It's water retention. Like a sealer. So here we go. Ready? I'll try to go through some of them. Apples, avocados, bell and hot peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, grapefruit, lemons, limes, mangoes, melons, nectarines, oranges, papayas, parsnips, passion fruit, peaches, pears, pineapple, plums, pumpkins, rutabaga, squash, sweet potatoes, tangerines, tomatoes, turnips, yucca, aseres bnei haman.  So that's a long list. R’ Yitzy Hisiger: So these are all fruits and vegetables that are generally coated with shellac? R’ Sholem Fishbane: And it could be with shellac. And especially the ones that you're going to find being sold to consumers where it has to look nice and seasonal and whatnot. So there are some that use a petroleum-based wax, which is fine. But the problem and the most common is the shellac one. And the question is, how does halacha look at that? So there's a basic machlokes , we'll call it, between Rav Moshe  and Rav Elyashiv . Rav Moshe  says, the halacha  is called hayotzei min hatamei tamei . And the question is, what about something called pirsha ? Like, mei raglayim  is called, is that pirsha ? Hayotzei  is that pirsha ? Pirsha , which we have much more room to work with. So Rav Moshe  says that since shellac comes out and it's rock hard, he says, miskasheh ke'etz sheba la'avir olam, v'lo hayah davar ochel . It's nothing. It's pirsha . Just ignore it. It doesn't have a din  of hayotzei min hatamei . Rav Elyashiv  has a chiddush . He says, wait a minute. Pirsha  is only a svara  and mutar when it comes from a pleasant-tasting animal, like the mei raglayim  of a beheima temeiah . And then the chazal  says, okay, don't worry about that. But if the insect is inherently inedible, so it's still assur because the pirsha  has the same din  as a yotzei . So that's an inherent machlokes . And we could be here all day. It's very gishmak . Svaros  back and forth. And, therefore, most of the major hashgachos follow Rav Moshe . And, therefore, we'll not only allow it on products, but they'll even certify it. Okay? We'll certify the actual shellac. I've seen it with hashgacha , even if it comes from a lac bug. We'll call it more the heimishe and Eretz Yisrael . They're saying, you know, stay away from it. And you know why it came back to light. It was actually after October 7th. So after October 7th, there were many things that happened, obviously a terrible tragedy to Klal Yisrael . But one of the things that happened was they couldn't get to the farms that they were used to getting their produce from. So they were bringing produce from the United States and other countries. And what happened was the Badatz   Eidah Hachareidis  issued Raboisai . There's stuff coming in from overseas. It's talking about produce, your apples, whatnot. Make sure that you get rid of it before you eat it because, you know, it's assur . Now you'll ask how do you get rid of a coating because it's pretty stuck. It's pretty hard to get off. R’ Yitzy Hisiger: Unless you peel it? R’ Sholem Fishbane: So you can peel it. You can peel it. Another possible way is you can actually rub it off. It won't come off. But you can throw it in boiling water for 10 seconds, which will loosen it. Then you can take a shmata . R’ Yitzy Hisiger: Really? R’ Sholem Fishbane: Yeah. R’ Yitzy Hisiger: And you can actually see it come off? R’ Sholem Fishbane: You'll feel it. It's a waxy thing. So, you know, that's something that is a possibility. You can't do that with the candies, though. You can't do that with the candies. So someone asked, like, okay, so if I want to be machmir , like, which one should I do? It's going to be hard for me to do one. What about the candy? Like in Chicago, we had a store, a candy store, where they had a whole section shellac-free, confectionery-free. So if someone wanted to be machmir . They go and they know they can get the candies from that area that were okay. Yeah, so we did that. So, you know, there's interesting stories. On one hand. R’ Yitzy Hisiger: Just to clarify before you go further, you're talking about someone wanted shellac-free, they were being machmir . Now, if I pick up a box of kosher candy and I say it's kosher because it has national certification, or even sometimes a heimeshe hechsher  on the box, isn't that telling me that either it doesn't have shellac or that the shellac is not a problem? R’ Sholem Fishbane: The latter. Most agencies that write that, if it, let's say, candies, if it has a national hechsher , it usually means, well, saying it's shellac, and it's true. R’ Yitzy Hisiger: Because they hold halachically  like R’ Moshe? R’ Sholem Fishbane: Right, yeah. That's not a problem. Not a problem. I have reached out to some of the heimeshe hechsherim  to understand what goes into maybe a sticker on a candy that has it, and so far, my research is that they're basically saying we also agree with R’ Moshe , that they are not removing the shellac, at least the ones I've contacted. So there you go. I haven't seen that they're going into these massive candy companies and making them remove it for their small run. R’ Yitzy Hisiger: Is there a way for the layman, for the man on the street, the kosher consumer, when he picks up a box of candy and he sees that certification, is there a way for him to discern, okay, this candy does have shellac, but the kashrus agency is saying that it's okay, or that this box of candy does not have shellac, and therefore he could rest easy because he's not relying on any kulos . Is there any way to determine that? R’ Sholem Fishbane: So, if it's a national hechsher  and it says the word shellac, or some of the other words it comes up with, then it would be relying on R’ Moshe . If it would be a, let's say, a badatz   Eidah Hachareidis , obviously that means that they put in something special. A lot of the in-between, the heimeshe , call them. R’ Yitzy Hisiger: Could you check the ingredient panel? Yeah, it will be there. And it will be there either as shellac or as confectioner's glaze. E904, confectioner's glaze, resinous glaze. Resinous glaze and so on. R’ Sholem Fishbane: That's what will be over there, right. So that would be the best way. Call them. And that's what I did. I called. What are you, what's your standard exactly? So just one thing that I heard from R’ belsky , interesting. R’ belsky  had a geshmak sevara . He says the candies, when you suck it, so the coating is the first thing that comes off. And R’ belsky  was actually more worried about those other fatty acids that went into it than maybe the shellac itself because, you know, R’ Moshe  is R’ Moshe . But he said, interesting enough, when you bite a fruit, so you have shishim . Because it's a very small amount. And when you take a bite, you have all sorts of other parts going on, including the apple or, you know, if you like biting into, you know, a parsnip or whatever it is, then you're okay. So that was one, that was a very interesting thing. And at the same time, as we said earlier, the fruit, you possibly could have an eitzah , and that is you could put the fruit in the boiling water for 10 seconds and scrub it off. The bulk of the wax will come off. Now, again, the major agencies, including the CRC  and all the other agencies do rely on R’ Moshe . I think the point of kashrus awareness is to just, like you asked, what's this all about? What's behind it? It sounds pretty scary, coming from a lac bug. A lot of lac bugs that get a small amount. But it's a fascinating sugya, and our goal today is just to give some information, and then, of course, every consumer should ask their own shaila . R’ Yitzy Hisiger: Okay. Thank you for the education. Thank you for the information. And like you said, everyone should speak to their Rav , their Posek , their Moreh Hora'ah , and, you know, do what's appropriate. But thank you for the background.

Lab-Grown vs. Nature Today's topic is very futuristic. Cultured meat, clean meat, lab-grown meat... Let's get a behind-the-scenes peek at this topic which is still in the theoretical stages. Rabbi Mordechai Stareshefsky is a Rabbinic Coordinator at the OU. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah Anytime. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rabbi Mordechai Stareshefsky, Rabbinic Coordinator at the Orthodox Union. Thank you Rabbi Stareshefsky for returning and coming back to speak to us once again. R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky: Good to be here again, thank you. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: So last time we spoke about baby formula and other... Pesach  Right, Pesach , some other interesting topics and it's great to have you back and for you to bring your expertise to the table to discuss about another very interesting topic that was raised and that is lab-grown meat. There are many articles that have been written about it. If people look into it, it's a very, very interesting topic. So first of all, tell us what it is and then take us through the halachic  ramifications of such meat. R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky: So lab-grown meat is otherwise known as clean meat, cultured meat. It just refers to the... There's two parts to it. They capture the DNA of a cow, of a chicken, of a duck, anything, and that can be done through scrapings of the feathers, that can be done through the skin, that can be done through the actual meat and they put it into a serum to grow it. Now, it sounds pretty simple, but first let's talk about why they do it. Untold billions have been spent on it and it still hasn't gotten very far. They still haven't mastered the secrets of creation. So it used to be when we were children and maybe we’re dating ourselves a little bit, so when we were children, we met a vegetarian, a vegan, either because he had some philosophical difficulty, why should I eat a cow, maybe a cow... who said, I'm more important than a cow, or he felt bad for the cow. Today's vegetarian is not that. It might also be that, but today's a new type of vegetarian. Cows give off methane and global warming. By him eating meat, he's literally destroying the planet. So it's like a religious exercise almost with a zeal to create alternate forms of meat. And it's not just meat. They create plant-based whey to take... Also genetically indistinguishable. They make it out of a plant and they ferment it in these fermenters. And it's officially... I never tried it, but officially they give an allergen warming because it can trigger an allergen, a milk allergen, anaphylaxis, the whole nine yards. And they're going to be... They have to put an allergen warning on it. Okay, now we digress. So in terms of meat, they're trying to create this meat in order to get... They want to get rid of these cows. That's not trying to save Elsie, They're trying to kill Elsie, the cow. So they've invested a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of expertise into something which is really space age, which happens for free since sheishes yemei bereishis . What they're doing is is that every cell... If you take a cell, a human cell, a skin cell, it constantly replicates itself. Cells have an innate ability, put in by the Aibeshter,  to make one become two, two become four. So a person is constantly in movement. A person's cells don't stay the same. They're constantly growing. So they use that same technology. They take a scraping of a cow or a chicken, whatever it is, and the cell grows and replicates and replicates out of the animal in a growth medium. That's the theory behind it. That's actually in practice what they're actually doing. The issue is that you can't just... There's one technical issue before we get to halachic  issues. One technical issue which they have so far not yet been able to solve, at least not on a large level. It's scalability, what they say, to make it affordable. A few years ago, they had a taste. They had a burger that they made out of this. The burger cost $350,000. It was sponsored by one of the founders of Google. Definitely not cost effective. But to make it scalable, somewhat economical, what they need to do is they need to... In this, you can get... For example, they can get a chicken nugget. You get just the cells of chicken that's replicating, replicating, replicating until you have enough mashed chicken you can put together. But to put together a steak, k’shmo kein hu , you need not just meat. You need fat. You need muscles. You need skin. You need marbling. You're looking for grain. You're looking for... Now, an egg, stem cell research comes up in the political world. They can use stem cells and embryos to... Stem cells have the... All cells in an egg look exactly the same. And they are told by the master plan that you're going to become the leg and become the wing. But the cell in the egg looks the same. So they're trying to not just to do that. That's already a feat in and of itself, take stem cells and make the yesh me’ayin from there, so to speak. But they actually are looking at taking a cell of meat and trying to reprogram it in this growth medium that they have and make it into a fat cell. A meat cell to a fat cell is unbelievable. I don't think... I'm not up to date on the science of it, but I don't think they've been able to solve that problem in small doses perhaps, but not in large doses. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: So basically what you're saying is as they're working to replicate it so far, the lab-grown product, the cultured meat, as good as it may be, it hasn't achieved the perfection that they're looking for yet anyway. Right. But whatever it is that they're producing, and I guess it's not... Could it be bought? Is it even for sale? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky: Not for sale. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: It's not for sale. But it's out there in some laboratory somewhere. So I guess this conversation is more theoretical at this point than it is practical for our viewers. But that's what we're here for, you know, to learn and to be informed and to be educated. So this item, this cultured meat, this lab-grown meat, if we were to have one right here, obviously the first question people probably would want to know, is it considered real meat? Is it considered fleischigs ? Right? And what would the answer be? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky: So with regard to the halachic  sense of it, you know, fleishigs , the R’ Asher Weiss  writes a whole teshuva  saying why he considers it to be a fleishigs . He writes a Raya from a Gemara in Sanhedrin  a Gemara in Menachos, a Tosfos in Menachos.  It’s meat, it looks like meat, it walks like meat. That's his feeling on it and really, it's the most conservative approach. That's the approach, the OU would take if it would ever become feasible because the shailos  that would crop up otherwise, has real meat, it tastes like meat, it looks like meat and it's pareve . I mean, that's like a... R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Even though there are things like the Impossible Burger, which people who had it and people who eat it say that, you know, it's pretty good, it feels like meat, it somewhat tastes like meat, it resembles it. So, you do see there are imitations that are pretty good. R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky: Imitations are imitations. Everybody understands that they take pea protein or whatever it is, chickpeas and make them possible beyond meat, whatever. But, you know, there's a whole flavor industry making chemicals that replicate... The real thing, right. So, now we understand that somebody has no issue with. They understand that's not what it is, you know. A lot of butter products and milk products are not actually milk and butter That's fine. But, when it comes to... It actually looks like meat, tastes like meat. It actually is indistinguishable from regular meat. You never, you have the same sizzle on it, in theory where they're hoping to get it. So, I'll just tell you one fascinating discussion. R’ Hershel Schachter of the OU and the OU Baruch Hashem has been zoche  throughout the years to have Rav Belsky  and Schachter yibade   l'Chaim and Rav Asher Weiss  is a posek . So, this is not something you open up a Shulchan Aruch  and find, obviously. You have to go back to the sugya  and try to find a ra'ayah and really boi ois , it’s like R’ Moshe  style to boi ois  something yesh me’ayin , a Rash”i somewhere. So, R’ Schachter said like this. He doesn’t  subscribe to it. It's not meat. It's not meat. What you would do at the end? I don't know. We'll have to wait about that. But, as R’ Schachter said, when it comes to chicken, however, you take something from a chicken cell, from an egg cell, make a chicken out of it, imitation chicken. That, he holds, is going to be the same halachah  as chicken. Because meat, basar b’chalav, is from the Torah, Oif is a derabanan . Why were Chazal   gozer derabanan on chicken? Because it looks like meat. This also looks like meat. It's the same thing. It's the same halachah . When I take regular meat, OK, regular meat is not meat. So, it wouldn't even have it's a derabanan . It's... But here, I'm making chicken, and chicken is itself a gezerah . It's not a new gezerah . It's that chicken that Chazal   asur , he feels I would have the same halachah  over here. When it comes to chicken, he would hold it's a real problem with derabanan . That's a problem. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Right. But that's a fascinating distinction that he has. That's interesting. So, he would hold that chicken is a problem, meat is not a problem. We're talking about lab-grown. R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky: We're talking about lab-grown. You can't make your own gezeros . Meat, the Chachamim , the Chachamim  didn't asur  meat. And that's not a gezerah   l’gezerah , because it's the same thing. That's one of the Chachamim   asur , because it looks like meat. This also looks like meat. So, that's one, that's really the style that we deal with at the end of the day. But really, it's good they came to the OU in the beginning, because these cells have to be taken from a behemah tehorah . They can't be taken from a behemah temei'ah . They have to be taken from a ge shuchtene   behemah . It shouldn't have a problem of ever min ha'chai . Even when a behemah  is ge shuchten , it shouldn't have been a neveilah  or a tereifah . Interesting. And even though you can provide a shtickel Torah  with each thing, you know, my shver  says over, R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Your shver is? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky: Rav Hillel David . A talmid of Rav Hutner. So, he says over, that Rav Hutner  liked the Veitzner Rav  from Chicago, Rav   Meisels , because of the following story, that he built a mikveh  in Chicago, and the ba'alei batim  came to him and said, We have a mikveh . A kosher mikveh . We sent the shayla  to Rav Moshe  and Rav Moshe  wrote a 20-page teshuvah saying it's mutar . So, Rav   Meisels  said, I'm going to send my, I'm going to describe my mikveh  to a Rav Moshe . And if a Rav Moshe takes more than a half a page to say it's mutar , I'm going to use your mikveh instead of that. So, you know, the OU has to give a hechsher , lechatchilah . I can't come with a shtikel Torah  of 20 pages and say why it's, it's particularly interesting when it comes to the fourth question. So, we're done with three questions. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Well, let's review the three again. R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky: Number one, it has to be behemah tehorah . Two, it has to be shechted , so it shouldn't be ever min ha'chai . And three, it has to be a kosher if it's shechted . I'm saying kosher that it was nivdak  and it wasn't a tereifah . The fourth issue is the serum. It grows, and this serum is really the secret behind the whole thing because you have the DNA and it has, this thing that the Aibeshter did for free by the way, to make an animal with blood going through it and the blood grows the meat. This is all in the laboratory, these geniuses, and I said it without any sarcasm, they're really geniuses. They are geniuses. Yeah, they come up with, to replicate and they can send the growth medium and sends a message to the cell how to reproduce and what to reprogram it before. So far, I believe they're still doing it with blood. I don't think there's found a way to do it without blood. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: The serum is blood? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky: Yeah. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: It's blood from the same animal? R’ Mordechai Stareshefsky: Or not the same animal or maybe a derivative of it. And you're saying the blood would also have to come from... Even the blood, the blood, it's an ingredient. Right. When something's in a behemah , the blood is kosher. Once it's an ingredient to something, it's obviously going to be asur . And again, you can say a shtikel torah, its zeh v’ze gorem . So that's the fourth thing that they have to be careful with. And of course, so before the O.U. would give a heads-up that it has to meet all those four criteria. And it's good they came to us because even though it's not yet scaled up, but the cell banks are already there. that they have already. Wow. That was all done on the under the OU to make sure it was kosher. R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: And it sounds like it's an evolving field where they're probably learning new things and things are changing. So, I would tell our viewers to stay tuned. This is just our first conversation with R’ Stareshefsky. But when you have an update on how they're doing, well, maybe the next time... Yeah, you'll come. The next time you come, I want to have a sample so we can check it out, we can feel it and really learn more. But thank you again for being here. It is a fascinating, fascinating topic. It sounds like something really definitely beyond my pay grade. Takeh  something for the Gedolei Poskim  and something that's going to change over time because as they learn new things and as the kashrus  field, which is the OU is together with these large kashrus  organizations really at the forefront of staying on top of these changes within the food production field, you know, we'll look forward to hearing more. Thank you.

Ensuring a kosher kitchen. Let’s listen to Rav Shmuel Fuerst - Dayan of Agudas Yisroel of Illinois on the topic of keeping a kosher kitchen with 1 sink vs. 2 sinks. RYH Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus , presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah  Anytime. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rav  Shmuel Fuerst, Dayan  of Agudas Yisrael  of Illinois. Thank you to the Rav  for being here. I'd like to ask the Rav  about one very specific topic within the realm of Kashrus , and it's a domestic issue, something related to people's homes, and that is sinks. Many, many people today are privileged to have two sinks in their kitchens. I wonder when the Rav grew up if the Rav  had two sinks. RSF We didn't know there was such a thing as two sinks. RYH There was no such a thing as two sinks. Where did the Rav  grow up? RSF In Williamsburg. RYH In Williamsburg, probably in an apartment. RSF Yeah. RYH The Rav 's parents had one sink, right? RSF Yes. RYH It was used for milchigs and fleishigs . RSF Yes, yes. RYH And now, especially now, Yidden are moving out to peripheral areas outside of the popular Jewish areas. They're buying houses that were previously owned by non-Jews, and most of them have one sink. So, you know, there is a portion of our population that has two, but many have one. What guidance could the Rav  give as far as that's concerned with the milchigs , fleishigs , pareve ? How do you make it work with one sink? RSF First, I just want to mention that if you buy a house for a few hundred thousand dollars, or a half a million dollars or more, RYH Halevai, it's only a few hundred thousand dollars. RSF Whatever it is. I come from Chicago. So, you pay a lot of money for the house. You can already afford to have two sinks. You should change the kitchen right away before you move in to have two sinks. And it should be not close to each other. You should ask a Rav . He'll tell you how to set up the two sinks. L'chatchila , just like everything else you want to be, kosher   v’yashar  in your house, you have two beds, you have this, you have everything. You have kosher v’yashar , the kitchen, which is the main portion of a person's house, should be 100% L'chatchila . L'chatchila , you should have two sinks, not one sink. If you buy with a sink and for some reason you can't do it right away, then you have to be very careful. L'chatchila , you should always move into a house or apartment that has two sinks or try as soon as you move in to change into two sinks. That's L'chatchila . Now, we’re talking about if you have only one sink, like we had when we were young, when we grew up, we only knew of one sink. We didn't know that there existed two sinks. To have one sink, you've got to be very careful of milchigs  and fleishigs  and pareve . A lot of people, what they do is they have like a tub with a plastic, they keep in the sink, which is only used for milchigs  and another tub used for fleishigs . That's how they wash in the one sink to avoid the problem of mixture  oo milchigs or fleishigs  because you have to be very careful then. You have to be careful who washes the dishes, how you wash the dishes, where you put the dishes and so on. You have to be very careful if you have only one sink. So you have to be very zohir  in the inyanei kashrus  when you have one sink. Sometimes you go on vacation. There's only one sink there. Same thing also. You have milchigs  and fleishigs . You have to be very careful that you have two tubs and you wash in each one a separate tub or you just wash by the running water. You don't put anything in the sink directly into the sink. You put it in the sink, then you might run into problems. The sink is treif . So you have kasher . Not all sinks can be kashered so fast. Sometimes you have ceramic sinks and so on. There are shitos  that say you can't kasher  at all. Some people  kasher  three times. Then you ask a shaila to your Rav . But you have to like I said, the chiyuv   l'chatchila , you must have two sinks. If you own a house and you're going to rent something for a long time, it's k'dai  to get two sinks. It costs a couple hundred dollars, maybe a thousand dollars. It's k'dai . Just like you invest to buy kosher clothing, you invest to have a kosher  kitchen also. Like I said, people call me when they have a kosher  kitchen, should they have one microwave and two microwaves. I say, have two microwaves, one for milchigs  and one for fleishigs . Don't be someich sometimes, I'll keep the fleishigs  and the  milchigs  because I'll double wrap it. Because you might remember that, but your children won't remember that. They’ll want pizza, they’ll want other things. A person, if you can afford to buy a house and other expensive things for the house, you can afford to buy another microwave. The same thing with Pesach . People call me and say, can I kasher  my microwave. I say, most of the time you can't kasher . What is the cost of a microwave? You don't have to buy it. You use a microwave only 3-4 days chol hamoed, on Shabbos  and Yom Tov you don’t. You use it three or four days. So you don't have to buy the most expensive one. You buy one for $50, $75. You still can buy it at that price and have it for Pesach . How often do you use it? RYH Right, right. Going back to the sink for a second, even if someone has two different tubs, they're not putting anything directly into the sink. Is there any issue with the fact that there's only one faucet and there's steam rising? RSF We're not worried. We worry about nitzok chibur . Nitzok chibur  is a Machlokes, Rem”a, Sha”ch  and Taz . We hold the l’dina , R’ Moshe  held l’dina , that nitzok chibur  is only a problem for Pesach , not for all year round. So that, if you have hot water coming down, you don't say nitzok chibur  for milchigs  and fleishigs . So you can have only one faucet and you're okay. Also, one more thing. If you do put in a kosher kitchen and you open the sink, some sinks have only like a milchigs  and fleishigs and the hot water and cold water come from the same place. You should have separate cold water and hot water, the water comes out from. RYH Meaning two different knobs? RSF Two different knobs. Knobs for cold, and knobs for hot. It shouldn't be coming from the middle out because then sometimes you don't turn it completely cold and then on Shabbos  you have a problem with hot water coming out. RYH Oh, that's what you're talking about. You're talking about where the water is dispensed by picking up one handle. That you could either swivel right or left. That's a hilchos Shabbos  issue. Those people who have those types of handles, as opposed to two knobs, very often what they'll do to prevent it is they'll turn off the hot water for Shabbos . RSF Or they'll turn it all to the right when only cold water comes out. RYH Right, but like the Rav is saying, sometimes people are not careful to do that. RSF Right, correct. RYH That's a separate issue, Shabbos issue with sinks. Okay, thank you so much.

Industrial Kashrus Systems Everyone loves to know what goes on behind the scenes. Today we take a tour of a typical factory with Rabbi Yitzchak Hanoka, Senior Rabbinate Coordinator with the OK. We’ll find out all the systems in place to ensure kashrus at the highest level. Rabbi Hisiger: Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah Anytime. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rabbi Yitzchak Hanoka, Senior Rabbinate Coordinator with the OK. Thank you Rabbi Hanoka for being here. Rabbi Hanoka: Thank you for having me, it's a real honor. Rabbi Hisiger: So we're here to discuss with you the topic of industrial kashrus. I know you've put a lot of work and time and effort and thought into systems of industrial kashrus. We'll break it down into different segments. Let's start first with the rabbinic side of industrial kashrus and the systems that you've implemented. Explain to us in layman's terms what that means. Rabbi Hanoka: Basically what it means is that in order to be able to manage and oversee thousands of ingredients, thousands of products and thousands of facilities frankly, you have to have a system. Without a system it's impossible to do that. So every hechsher on a national scale, the reliable hechsherim, they all have their own system, but the concept and the focus is really the same. They have to have a system that's going to provide the elements of security, traceability and follow up that's necessary to be able to give the hashgacha and to maintain the quality. Rabbi Hisiger: So it's more than just dispatching a team of qualified mashgichim to factories and companies and things like that, right? It's more robust than that. Rabbi Hanoka: It's much more robust. Essentially what we have is in the food sector, the food industry, you have probably about 20 sectors of the food industry. The baking industry, the flavor industry, the cheese industry, the wine industry, the meat industry, etc., etc. And you're dealing with, in a large agency, you're dealing with a team and a pool of colleague rabbis, some of whom are experts in various industries. And then when you're dispatched to go see a company and to do what's called an initial visit, an expert rabbi who's well-versed in kosher law and halacha, but also is well-versed in manufacturing processes, walks into a facility, understands machinery, understands processes, understands how to synthesize, how to merge halacha with processes that are going to work in the actual, in the real world, so to speak. That's when we talk about a kashrus system because you have to make sure it's going to work halachically, but also make sure it's practical. We can't give an eitzah to a customer to do something that's not going to be practical. It's not going to work. So we always look for things to make sure it's multilayered in terms of security. Rabbi Hisiger: Could you give us an example of that multilayer where one level may catch something that slipped through another? Rabbi Hanoka: Absolutely. Like, for example, if we go to a facility that they're processing both dairy product and pareve product. So, if the machinery and the processes and the products are totally noncompatible, which means you cannot interchange the dairy product with the pareve product, it's different machinery, different kind of equipment and different ingredients, then we know really inherently it's segregated so we have safety with regards to kashrus. On the other hand, if it's the same type of machinery, same type of ovens, there's more risk there. So you have to put in safeguards to make sure they're not going to mingle or proximity gets into the question. So we really do what's called a risk assessment. What are we talking about? What are the possibilities? Let me just share a story with you to illustrate the point. I had a customer who used to repack product by hand. They would take scoops and, you know, take it from a box to a small container. And then they grew and they got machinery to do it automatically. And then they were testing the line. And then they, what we usually do in such systems when we do it electronically, we'll often have them, and it's all cold processing. They wash them between, and there’s no bliah. But we'll have them run pareve products first and then dairy because they break down the equipment after dairy. But they said to me that the supplier, by mistake, put dairy chocolate in a pareve product. And the supplier that they were referring to happens to be a supplier that I also certified. And on the phone, I was driving on the road. My mashgiach reported this to me. I said, it's not what happened. I said, what happened is they're used to hand packing and they see what they're doing. They're now packing by machine. They're not used to cleaning the machine. When they broke it down, there was a piece of chocolate that got stuck to the machine because it was sticky out. It was moist, moisture in the air. And it got dislodged by the next packaging. And they have to get used to it. It's like, go see. And he said, Rabbi, you're right. That's because, not because, because I know the process. Rabbi Hisiger: So you also knew that the... Rabbi Hanoka: I knew that they switched this, but I knew what the risk was. And they were testing. I said, that's what they need to, and they were right. Rabbi Hisiger: Wow. Rabbi Hanoka: So just, and it's all because when you understand the mechanics of it, what the risk assessment is, then you see from what's behind. Understanding what the real question is. And that's how we train rabbis. That's how we train mashgichim. We train all our staff bezras Hashem to do that. And then, of course, Hashem is the active partner. But that's our, that's our... To do things in an Erlicha way, we have multi-layers of security in place. So that in case one of the layers falls off, you have the security in place. Rabbi Hisiger: Now, when you say layers, are you referring to personnel as well? Where you have different levels of senior coordinators, and then mashgichim, and things of that sort? Or is it just like you were mentioning in the facility itself? Rabbi Hanoka: I'm focusing on the facility itself. It happens to be that every facility that's certified by a national agency will have a rabbinic coordinator, who's an expert rabbi with smicha, who's very knowledgeable in halacha and food manufacturing, oversee that facility. Part of the process is that we write an extensive report describing the on goings of the facility, and exactly how we give a hechsher, what we're doing, so in case someone else has a question, one of our colleagues, they can review our reports. Plus we do peer-to-peer review. And then included in that, we talk about what the areas of sensitivity are in place, what safeguards we're putting in place, and how we're addressing them. And, of course, we have mashgichim instructions, which will come later. But an example of things that we'll do is, if it's a facility that handles kosher-sensitive ingredients, for example, they handle hard cheese. Even if it's not chalav Yisrael. Hard cheese, that's not chalav Yisrael. To make a kosher is quite expensive. To make gevinas Yisrael, you need a mashgiach temidi. So there's a lot of non-kosher cheese out there on the market. So we may require the customer to have a large supply of kosher cheese on hand at all times. We may require the mashgiach to visit more often. We're going to have safeguards in place to secure against what we would consider a more sensitive type of raw material. And that is diagnosed by an expert rabbi. Rabbi Hisiger: Who makes that diagnosis of the risk assessment? Okay, over here in this facility is a little more risky, or we have reasons to suspect, so we're going to put in X, Y, and Z safeguards. Who makes that? Rabbi Hanoka: The rabbi would make that assessment, but he's using principles that are known in the industry. Kosher sensitive ingredients are treated with more sensitivity. Kosher setups that are more sensitive are treated more sensitively. And some setups require a mashgiach temidi, depending on what we're dealing with. But all that has to be factored in in the setup process. So there's many things going through the rabbi's mind in the process itself. Rabbi HIsiger: Talk about what goes on in the office of the OK in terms of implementing some of these, we'll call them safeguards and structures that you put in place. Rabbi Hanoka: All the hechsherim, reliable hechsherim, have a data system. Exactly what they do, there may be slight variation, but the general theme is the same, where they want to be able to get the requisite data from the customer. So just so the consumers and our audience understands, every raw material, every ingredient that's used in a kosher certified product has a kosher letter that actually attests to the status of that product. They'll say this particular ingredient is kosher pareve, kosher dairy, or whatever it is. And they'll also say it's got to have a symbol on it, or it doesn't have to have a symbol on the industrial level, or if it's bulk, if it's coming by a tanker truck, how it's supposed to be received. It gives instructions of under what circumstances it's actually being certified, known as a restriction. So on the industrial side, we harvest all this data. The customer will send us all the ingredients with the kosher letters. Rabbi Hisiger: To clarify, when you say customer, you mean the company you're certified, right? I just want to make sure, because viewers may be hearing customer, and they're thinking of themselves. Rabbi Hanoka: So I mean the certified client will submit the kosher letters with the ingredients. In many cases, many hechsherim require the formulas. Some do and some don't, but formulas are important as well. Product lists, and then we also look at the labels. So we call these critical control points. You have the receiving of the ingredients, and then you have the final product that they're producing, which refers to the finished product label. We want to make sure the label is accurately printed with the right kosher information, pareve for pareve, dairy for dairy, or Passover for Passover. So we try very hard to have the customer send us a soft copy image of the finished product label whenever possible so we can review that. Sometimes the mashgiach will review that on the field. But we try to review that before it's printed, so human error does happen, people make mistakes. We try to vet that out in the process of our harvesting of our data. Another thing that I want to make it clear to our audience is that there are thousands of product labels out there on the market, but a little-known secret, without revealing who, what, when, and where, is a lot of products are made in the same facility under different brands, known as private labels. So you'll have some people that don't even have an entity of a factory, but they just have a brand, and they'll make it by various factories. Of course, that's kept confidential. But again, the hechsherim has to harvest that information, know where to issue a kosher letter for that. So the data side of the support system of kashrus is very complex. There's many, many different angles to it. As I said, you have the ingredients, you have the finished products, you have the formula, you have the private labels, you have the contract, all these things, and they're all tied in to provide support for the kashrus and the company. Rabbi Hisiger: Now, I'm curious, because on an office side, that's quite a lot of information to store. I'm imagining you don't have file cabinets, right, with papers of, or maybe I'm wrong, maybe years ago. But I imagine, do you have a custom-made computer software that digests all this information? Rabbi Hanoka: Right, so there's custom-made software that digests all this information, but even more than that, it's built in such a way where if you ever have one of the ingredients that could lose their certification mid-year, because usually the certification is from year to year, then you can just say, tell the system that this particular ingredient is no longer kosher, and it will spit out a report, who is using it, where it's being used, and then we can tell the customer no longer to use it. So we have traceability and targetability instantly. So it's very, very sophisticated. It's not my expertise, but I know it exists, and I know enough about it that if there's something I have to report or to trigger, we'll know what to try to respond to. Rabbi Hisiger: I'll say that it does sound sophisticated, but it's really not a luxury if you want to maintain proper hashgacha, right? I mean, if there's an ingredient that's being used that's losing certification mid-year, and you have products that contain that ingredient, I mean, you have to be on top of that, right? Rabbi Hanoka: It's an absolute must, and I want to share, just to share a mashal, I do quite a lot of driving in my work. So think of it in these terms. If you have a customer, somebody who has a trucking company, if they only own one truck, they can remember in their head that every month they have to change the oil, they've got to check the brakes, whatever maintenance involved in the truck to keep their truck safe. Once you have a fleet of 100 trucks, it's physically impossible to remember exactly what has to be done with each truck. The only way to do that is to have a system. So if you want to be able to enjoy the freedom of the high seas, you have to become a slave to the compass. The compass is your system. You must have that, and the data is a big part of that. And again, what I want to bring out to our viewers' attention is that we're trained to think in systems. Like whenever there's something that goes on, we ask ourselves, okay, is this going to be in congruence with the system or not? And if not, we have to react to it. That's kind of what we do. Rabbi Hisiger: Anything else you wanted to share about maintaining the database and maintaining all the information that you need so that you have this industrial system in place? Rabbi Hanoka: My final thoughts are the people that harvest the data, that bring it in, that enter into our system and monitor the data, they're the unsung heroes because they're sitting in the back. No one sees them. Rabbi Hisiger: No one sees them. They don't get the accolades. Rabbi Hanoka: Right, but they are really the backbone in terms of providing that prong of support. And you couldn't do it without them, so it's quite an important… Rabbi Hisiger: It's our gratitude to them for what they do really under the radar. And they support the rabbi very much in his work. Probably these personnel are available at a moment's notice to provide that crucial information, right? If a mashgiach is in a plant that needs an update or something like that, he's going to rely on them to give a minute to minute update. Rabbi Hanoka: Or if he has a question about what's been changed on the data side to make sure it's all in compliance, he'll rely on them. So there's multi-layers of security. Whenever we see something that doesn't balance, we check it on multiple layers so there's many layers of protection in place. Rabbi Hisiger: Just a final component of the conversation, and that is the role of a mashgiach within the umbrella or rubric of industrial kashrus and the other items that we discussed. So talk about that for a moment. Rabbi Hanoka: So the mashgiach is primarily… His task is to carry out the instructions of the rabbinic coordinator, the rabbi who set up the kashrus of that facility. So the rabbi who set up the kashrus of that facility will have to write detailed instructions. Depending on the facility, they could be smaller in terms of size or very large. Some large facilities may even have 20 or 30 points to cover on every visit. Rabbi Hisiger: Can you give an example of what those points might be? Rabbi Hanoka: Yeah, sure. So we'll talk about if it's a facility that has multi-status, kosher pareve, kosher dairy, or non-kosher, we'll talk about all the segregation systems in place to make sure there's no commingling, and how that's being done, how that's being monitored, making sure all those safeguards are in place. We also make sure in certain facilities where they have steam return, if they're using the shared steam, making sure there's no steam return between kosher and non-kosher. They'll often dump the steam, or they'll treat the steam to make it pagum. There's always a system in place to avoid that concern, and anything that is a potential kashrus concern was addressed by the rabbi. The mashgiach's job is to make sure that those systems, we call them critical control points of security, are in place. In addition to that, I want to stress something else, that I often tell… I've trained many mashgichim. I've also trained a lot of my colleagues, because I have a passion for education. I think I get that from my wife's grandfather, who was also into education. Rabbi Berel Levy who worked for Torah Umesorah. It's a very interesting piece of information. But at any rate, so I've trained many mashgichim, and I tell them that we're not policemen. We're not there to try and catch the customer do something wrong. Our job is to guide them what to do, to do it right. So our job is to guide them, and I really encourage everybody to have conversations with the customer. So when we go to do a visit, or if I do an annual review, I sit down with the customer for about 20 minutes, I schmooze with them. What's happening? I look at the word emes. Aleph at the beginning of the year, Mem at the middle of the year, and Suf What's happening at the end of the year? So where were they? Where have they been? Where are they heading? You want to get a sense. You want to know your customer. You want to know what the client is up to, because they might share something with you. Oh, we're planning an expansion, and we're planning this. Oh, suddenly that changes implications. But again, it comes about through conversation. And I like to have conversations with people, even about information that I may be familiar with already, because I want to make sure that everything is coming across very clearly, and I tell my mashgichim the same thing. So I encourage them very much to have a very good relationship with the client, and that helps kashrus, because when the client has a question, they pick up the phone, they say, Rabbi, we want to plan something. Can you guide us to do it right? And that's really where the security comes in. In addition, the mashgiach has to be very well-versed, exactly what's going on in his facilities. If there's any change going on, he will be able to detect it right away. And I can tell, based on the questions the mashgichim ask me, if they understand the facility or not. So I've had situations where a mashgiach asked me a question exactly the same way that I would ask the question, because I trained him so detailed. That's what we're looking for, such a level of communication, and I would say a bond, if you will. Rabbi Hisiger: Would you say the relationship between a mashgiach and a facility, he's certifying is kabdeihu ve-chashdeihu, right? It's giving them respect, that they feel that the mashgiach respects what they're doing, but also, in the back of his mind, kind of having an eye out for any change in the status quo? Rabbi Hanoka: Yeah, I would say that, but I would say that the mashgichim are also told that if there is a change or there's a concern, that they have to send it over to the rabbi. They have to remain impartial. I would say they have to just say, you know, my job is to report, and in this case, if I'm the rabbi of the facility, Rabbi Hanoka will be in touch with you, and I'll talk to the client. But I don't want the mashgiach to be the one to front it, because they have to interact with him all the time. Because then it creates a tension, and maybe the facility won't be transparent with him. So I don't allow that. In fact, I'll guide them to do just the opposite, and then I'll have to front it. I'll have to navigate, and that's why we're in this position. We have to figure out how to navigate that. And also, which brings me to mind, what my shver Rabbi Levy taught me was, everything we do for kashrus ultimately is also to protect the client, to protect the certified customer. Whatever system you have in place, the amount of visits, the amount of requirements are there to ensure the product remains kosher. So you tell them that I'm doing this for you. It's for your sake. So you can have clients. You can sell the product, make money. So when they see it from those terms, they usually back off and say, thank you very much, Rabbi. They see it from the lens of it's for your own good. We as a hashgacha have to provide an environment where they're well-versed in what they need to do. We support them through the process. The mashgiach works with them on any possible changes. We rebalance the system as needed. And then I would say that you're providing an environment where kashrus is secure, and the customer feels like, yeah, this is working well for me. Rabbi Hisiger: Very impressive. Rabbi Hanoka: One more thing I want to say. During COVID, when raw material supply was hard to procure, and you had all kinds of raw material shortages, I wrote an article about that in our magazine, all agencies did this. We warned our mashgichim, be very careful, because when customers are in short supply of raw material, then they'll be incentivized to find alternates. So we encourage them to submit alternates. But that's, again, being proactive. So we work with the customer. Rabbi Hisiger: You preempted it by reaching out to the customer. Rabbi Hanoka: We understand what their issues are. If a customer is hurting financially, it's very dangerous kashrus-wise. So we'll put safeguards in place. We'll work with them. We'll find alternate suppliers. We'll even help them with alternate suppliers to provide kashrus security and to make sure that the system flows. Rabbi Hisiger: Listen, the lesson that I learned from the conversation with you is that kashrus is by no means a system where you just push a button and just let the system roll. It really involves so much activity and being proactive and really staying on top, staying on the tips of your toes and constantly being active and involved. Rabbi Hanoka: And the certified customer appreciates that. When they see that level of professionalism, they're paying for hashgacha. They see they're paying for something very, very substantial. And they appreciate that. It's very special. Rabbi Hisiger: Well, we appreciate as well everything you've done for the field of kashrus in general over the last quarter century, what you've given to the OK and to the field of kashrus in general. So continued hatzlacha in your avodas hakodesh. And a special thank you for shlepping out all the way from Brooklyn to here to the Let's Talk Kashrus Studios. It was a real honor to speak to you. Thank you. Rabbi Hanoka: Thank you for having me. Be matzliach.

What is the best setup for an office kitchen where all the employees don't keep kosher? How many microwaves do you need? These questions and more answered by Rav Shmuel Fuerst - Dayan of Agudas Yisroel of Illinois in this week's episode. Rabbi Hisiger: Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah Anytime. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rav Shmuel Fuerst, Dayan of Agudas Yisroel  of Illinois. Thank you so much Rav Fuerst for being here again. Today I'd like to ask the Rav about a very common question that comes up in work environments where there are Jewish employees, there are Gentile employees, there's a kitchen that's used very often it’s a shared space, but more often than not if it's a Jewish owned business they'll have separate microwaves for example for Jewish employees and for the non-Jewish employees for everyone to feel comfortable. Can the Jewish employees assume that because there are separate microwaves that the Jews are using the Jewish microwave we'll call it the kosher microwave and the Gentile employees are using the other microwave. Are there any Kashrus  concerns? Rabbi Fuerst: You can't assume anything today. The ideal thing if you have an environment with frum people and goyim or frei people, best thing if you can to have two separate kitchens one kitchen for the frum people and one kitchen for the frei and goyim. If that could be arranged that's ideal you have less Shailos in Kashrus.  but in most cases they can't do that so they're going to have two microwaves let's say a kosher microwave and a non-kosher microwave. You can't assume that they tell the goyim to use only the non-kosher they're going to use always non-kosher. either it could be broken once in a while could be someone else is using and they're in a rush they want to and sometimes you just don't even look it says kosher, non-kosher. you can't assume that the kosher microwave is always kosher you have to do precautions for it don't have it next to each other have it on the other side of room and tell the goyim that on this side room is only the non-kosher part and the other side is the kosher part. you have to do as much as possible that there should be separation, so it shouldn’t come to a michshol. You have to be very extremely careful because very often the goyim don't care, kosher, non-kosher and even if you threaten them you're gonna fire them they're not scared about that today. there's no mirsas  today and they'll find another job. another Jewish person will chap them so if it's a good worker someone's gonna chap him. so therefore you should not have the microwaves next to each other, they should be far apart from each other. plus you should have a sign on it this is only for kosher, people who keep kosher, something like that. A strong sign, big enough, not in small letters, but in big letters. and you have to let them know verbally also, that's the kosher side and this is not. it's not enough a sign there, you should tell them even when you hired them tell them listen you want to warm up a sandwich a non-kosher sandwich we have a place for you to do it but you have to be careful. and tell them, listen, there are people who have strict dietary laws and so on and if they have seichel they’ll understand it, and then they'll be careful. Rabbi Hisiger: Why if there are separate kitchens is that sufficient? Rabbi Fuerst: Because usually in the kitchen, if it's a treif  kitchen you'll have certain drinks for them which they like that's not kosher, you'll buy things for them that they like, they want it better so they'll spend more time in that kitchen. they have no reason to go to the kosher kitchen. make everything available in the non-kosher kitchen and then you should have less chances of problems. and plus you have to keep your eyes open but the less chances of taruvos. Rabbi Hisiger: Now in a business where let's say they don't have the wherewithal or the space or the money to make two separate kitchens and they have signs that clearly delineate which microwave is kosher which microwave is non-kosher and they have cameras so the Rav  was saying before that there's no mirsas  because there's nothing… Rabbi Fuerst: Cameras mean nothing. cameras won't matter. what I would say if you use the kosher microwave put in a bag to be, on the safe side double wrap everything up and that's it and you have no problem then. Rabbi Hisiger: so if you double wrap it no matter what you're safe. Rabbi Fuerst: even a treif microwave, milchigs, fleishigs… so always double wrap your food and then you're safe no matter what. Rabbi Hisiger: thank you so much you

Walk into a bar. The bartender asks, "What can I get you?" The rabbi replies, "Something kosher that wasn’t blessed by either of them!" All jokes aside, this episode discusses various instances where kashrus intersects with potential Avodah Zarah issues. Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, Director of Kashrus for the Chicago Rabbinical Council, and the Executive Director of AKO discusses some fascinating examples in todays episode. Rabbi Hisiger: Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus, presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project in conjunction with Torah Anytime. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, Executive Director of AKO and the Kashrus Administrator of the Chicago Rabbinical Council. Thank you Rabbi Fishbane for joining us once again. Rabbi Fishbane: Thank you for having me. Rabbi Hisiger: So you know we talk about Kashrus on this program and we talk about ingredients, we talk about supervision, we talk about systems, but there's one component of Kashrus that is very often overlooked and it's a unique concern and maybe even surprising to people because it's not in the, what we would call the traditional part of Yoreh De'ah  that people study and learn when they're learning the halachos of Kashrus. And I'm referring to Avodah Zarah . You know it was brought to our attention that there are actually concerns of Avodah Zarah  when it comes to certifying kosher food. You're very well aware of this. Give us somewhat of a summary of what the concern is, how people can be cognizant of it, and what they could do you know once they learn about the facts. Rabbi Fishbane: Great point. That is very, very true. And what most consumers don't understand behind the scenes, our bais din  sometimes are dealing with, Avodah Zarah   she'eilos , which I would say a lot of people that learn Kashrus skip right over that, like how could that be nogei'a ? I'll give you one recent example that came to our attention. We certify a company that was making eye drops. Eye drops. Now we used to ask companies, why would you want a hechsher  on something that seemingly doesn't want a hechsher ? But we stopped asking. You know why? Because primarily they understand that kosher is very good for marketing. It gives people an assurance. And you know it's, well I just, we want it anyway. We said okay, if you want it then there's no Kashrus concerns. We're okay with that. So we were giving, we granted a hechsher  to this company that was making eye drops. And it came to my attention once I saw the actual box, there was all sorts of references to Yoshka and all sorts of things that, oh my gosh, what's going on over here? So I asked him to come into our office and we had a meeting. And I have to tell you something, in all my years of training this really took my breath away. It turns out that not only is he an eye doctor, but he's also a priest. And he has a deep feeling that the reason why the world is in a sorry state that it is, he goes back to the beginning of Bereishis , Genesis, where Adam Harishon  ran away from Hashem  and the way you have to come back is through seeing, and get this, the way we're going to come back, he knows, is by Bayis Shlishi . Bayis Shlishi . And he knows that when the Jews build Bayis Shlishi , the concept of Parah Adumah , this is again, this goy is telling this to me. Parah Adumah , you're all going to be purified, but when you go into the mikveh , you close your eyes. And your whole body won't be pure because your eyes won't get the mikveh  water. And how is the Beis HaMikdash  going to be pure? You hear what's going on? So he created this eyewash that is going to be purified through holiness and the entire purpose is for when the Klal Yisrael  builds the Bayit Shlishi , we're going to use it. And therefore he needs a hechsher  because it has to be kosher in order to be. Rabbi Hisiger: You couldn’t have made this up. Rabbi Fishbane: You couldn’t have made this up. So I said to him, how do you make it holy besides for the fact that we’re giving a hechsher? He says he takes certain waters from Ethiopia that the king dipped in and then he pours it in and then he says a three-page prayer. I said what type of water? That wasn't the she'eilah of Avodah Zarah . I said let me see the prayer. I looked at the prayer. Oh gosh. So I gave it over to our beis din  and our beis din  looked at it, studied it, had several meetings with him. And the bottom line is they told me, it was as if he took out chelek gimmel of yoreh deah, hilchos avodah zarah, and found every chumra  to make sure this is Avodah Zarah and he wrote it into his prayer. It was like there's no she'eilah , this is mamesh Avodah Zarah . So we had to tell him that not only can it not be certified but thankfully nothing had hit the market yet. All the products had to be taken off our hechsher . That's one example that didn't even hit the market. Rabbi Hisiger: A wild example. Rabbi Fishbane: But there are many, many others. You know, I go to, we travel a lot so we have factories in India. So in India, if you know that the cows are sacred there, okay? What I mean by sacred is like if there's a cow crossing the street, everything stops. That's why traffic in India is horrendous because they don't shecht  or kill the cows and the cows are sacred so there's cows all over and there's traffic jams galore. Yet, it's okay according to their culture or religion to take milk from the cow. And there are some hechsherim  that actually certify products with milk from India. So I ask you, what do you think? If it's holy, if it's Avodah Zarah , what would be the heter  to give such a, now the CRC, we do not do that because we rely on, you know, Chalav Yisrael , lefi  Rav Moshe, and because there are many behemos teme'os  that are being milked, then we wouldn't give a hechsher . But there are some hechsherim that rely on the Pri Chadash , which is not like Rav Moshe but it's more if the behemos teme'os  milk is more expensive. So they do rely. So what would be the heter  for such a thing? So where do you go for such, right? Where do you go? So that's where the rabbanim  that live in these countries become very valuable. And we spent some time talking to them and understanding, basically the way it works is that the cows themselves are not Avodah Zarah  where you bow to the cow. Rather they're sacred so that they carry, you know, neshamos , whatever they believe on. I'm not, I'm not bekant  in their exact religion. But the point is, is that it didn't make it Takroves Avodah Zarah  to the point where the milk goes out. So that's another example. I have to tell you a story, not related to Kashrus but it's just a great story. Remember the tumult with the sheitels many, many years ago? They were bringing it to the Indians and they were bringing it to Avodah Zarah . So I was one time in a Dunkin' Donuts, certified kosher Dunkin' Donuts and I was waiting to talk to the owner. The owner actually was from Indian descent and he was with his family and they're talking amongst themselves and I'm standing outside and I overhear the conversation. I listen to, you know, we have Yiddish tumults, you know, coffee room tumults. So they have coffee room tumults. Maybe, I don't know what they drink. Okay. And their tumult at the time was, you hear what's going on? In the temples that we thought our daughters are going to give the hair to the temple in India, they're not even making it into the temple. As soon as it's cut, it's taken off to the side to be sold to the wig industry. Ah Chutzpah, what's going on? I was like, this is the greatest news ever. So, you know, that's just a great little story. But there are many, many other things that come up, certainly with drinks. I know Rabbi Niehaus spoke on this great program you have. He talked about sake, which is rice wine from Japan. I've been in Japan and I remember I was in the factory. I couldn't find a room to daven mincha . Every room had a getchke . Okay. You know, that's what they do. Before the production of the day, they bring over and they say something to the getchke . At the end of the day, the same thing. So that's the shaila . I mean, if you go through the sugyos  of Avodah Zara , it seems to be not a problem because they're not actually taking the sake in front and then using that sake to be served. There's various halachos . Another is trappist beer, which I believe Rabbi Niehaus mentioned. That's very interesting because that's being made on the, it's called the abbey. It's by the monasteries. It has to be made for the monasteries. And there's three laws to be called trappist beer. One is that all products have to be made immediately in the surrounding of the abbey, which is chatzer in halacha . The production must be carried under the supervision of the monks or nuns. And finally, the profits are intended for the needs of the monastery, which again, if you learn in Gemara Avodah Zara , it goes through various things. So if you go through, there's something called betoiva , which the Mechaber  and the Rema talk about. Is this called betoiva ? Because you are, you are supporting the monastery, which is pretty much betoiva . There's takroves . Is it takroves? lechoira not. The location, we couldn't get into the abbeys, but that's what Google maps are for. We were able to look over, find out exactly where they're making the trappist beer, how close they are. And it's pretty much a chatzer . It's, it's a problem. Is it called mehana ? Because it's, you know, giving, and of course the overall shaila  of Christianity today is shituf  or not. We follow the Noda B'Yehuda that it is. So, you know, if you go through the list and I'm obviously not going to go through all Hilchos Avodah Zara  at the moment, but if you go to the list, it doesn't look good. But I must tell you that the last prat seems to be the saving grace to buy trappist beer, and that is retail stores. And Rema  talks about that if it goes through a third party, it's talking about malchus , the government. If it goes through a third party, you're not directly giving it to the monks or for the monastery. That seems to be a heter . That's okay. So if you would go into a regular liquor store and you would buy the trappist beer, and there's a certain logo that it's officially trappist. That seems to be okay because it's not going directly. But if you're traveling, most of them are in Belgium. If you're traveling and you want to buy one directly from, not so pashut , not so pashut . And I must tell you, I found out recently, believe it or not, here in America, there's a huge industry of honey being made by abbeys and monasteries, and that helps support them. And to be honest, we're researching this now. Does that hit the market? if you're buying it, and it's in a lot of America, it's a pretty big market. And I was talking to someone, he says, I was talking about the trappist beer. He says, you know, I'm a big honey farm guy. Did you know that they do a lot of business? Oh my gosh, just the last few days, we've been researching. So it's a big deal. Rabbi Hisiger: The trappist beer, what makes it different than traditional beer? That people go, you know, especially these connoisseurs of beer, like it. Rabbi Fishbane: We got to find a connoisseur. You know, beer to me, I'm still like, you know, I barely get it by Shalom Zachor,  personally. I don't know what's the chashivus of it, but it certainly is chashivus . I know 14 facilities in Belgium that's actually an authentic trappist product. That's at least in Belgium. I guess it's really authentic the way they've been doing it for hundreds or maybe even thousands of years, some of these places and people appreciate that. So that would be that. You know, and there's many other sorts of shailos that come up. We just had a restaurant recently that has a Japanese scenario going on in the restaurant. You know, they're trying to. And so we were dealing with the shaila  because they were putting up samurai warriors. Rabbi Hisiger: Oh, really? Like figurines? Rabbi Fishbane: Figurines, figurines. So our Av Beit Din  went in and cut off an ear, you know, made sure that people wouldn't assume it was a Buddha or whatever it is. So, again, Hilchos Avodah Zara , who's thinking about that? The mashgiach  that, you know, learns Hilchos Melicha and Pas Akum . But it really shows what it goes into running a conversation today, the need for a very strong Beis Din , a need for Talmidei Chachamim  as well as practical and knowing how to use Google Maps. Rabbi Hisiger: Rabbi Fishbane, that's absolutely fascinating. And we look forward if you ever have any of those other interesting stories, like the one about the eye drops, that's unbelievable. I think since we started this program, I think that that one takes the cake. So thank you for sharing and thank you for being here.