Lakewood Bnei Torah- Re: Kashrus- Time to wake up and smell the coffee- (ess shtinkt fun kup)

From an Email

In other words, every agency, organization, and individual out there giving hashgacha should be doing a proper job. Unfortunately, many are not, even to the point that one cannot eat at establishments that they certify or eat the products that they certify unless the kashrus system is independently verified.

Ubiquitous underperformance, even in bastions of holiness, does not make it more acceptable to do a sub-standard job, but it allows us to be more kind in considering that a deficient agency, organization, or individual is not a standout, but one of many.

The reasons vary: lack of expertise in kashrus systems, lack of management skills, lack of budget, lack of the community’s willingness to properly fund a top-notch, or even Halachically acceptable, kashrus program, misplaced compassion towards unqualified staff, turf wars, negligence, and sometimes even avarice and lack of yir’as Shamayim. But the consequences are the same: a community unknowingly eats that which is Halachically prohibited, and the knowing of the community are left with no good options and are frowned upon by the unknowing.

May Hashem protect all His children and grant us all to eat properly kosher food.

Kol Tov,

GH: You seem to always equate chassidsheh hecshseirim with the term “gold standard”. Maybe to you they are, but not to everyone else. I do not trust a product or establishment anymore because it has both the OU and a chasidesheh hechsher. If it only had the OU I would still trust it.

I have both a national and heimish hechsher on my place. The national one comes every month- the hemish one hasn’t come in well over a year and he has no idea what is even in my products. So, there are no rules but they definitely both have pros and cons.