Why is it wrong for the regulator to be a professional authority (regardless of whether it would be appropriate for that to be the Rabbinate)?

After all, the term “kosher” has some objective meaning, bounded by Jewish law, even if it is vague and open to interpretation up to a certain point. Moreover, it seems to me that the average religious person, and even the average traditional person, wants kosher certification that meets an Orthodox halakhic definition.
The Kashrut Fraud Law, in my opinion, relies on that assumption. If so, it seems reasonable to me that even if the kashrut world is privatized, use of the word “kosher” should still be restricted to businesses that meet such a criterion.

(In this context, people often raise the argument: “Whoever cares about kashrut should check.” I don’t entirely agree with that. There is value in not causing people who are committed to Jewish law, or to part of it, to stumble, even if they act negligently and do not investigate enough. If you are not among those who make this claim, then pardon me for being overly tedious.)

As you wrote, it has many meanings. The Rabbinate gives it one meaning, and giving it a monopoly means leaving the power in its hands to decide. I indeed am not among those people, and in my view the state is not supposed to save people from transgressions. It is supposed to provide them with a service. Each person will decide what kind of kashrut he consumes.

According to Matan Kahana’s “logic,” you can open all forms of regulation to “free competition.” Instead of the police, the tax authorities, the Registrar of Companies, and veterinary supervision—which are not financially dependent on those they supervise, and therefore allow themselves to “make life difficult” for the supervised parties and ask them “hard” and embarrassing questions—we’ll hand supervision over to “free competition,” and whoever cuts costs most and minimizes snooping and raising embarrassing questions will do the supervising. 🙂

The food manufacturer, restaurant owner, and hotel owner all have an economic interest in slapdash supervision that doesn’t inspect, ask, and investigate where the raw materials came from and what is done with them. The guardians of the “cream” will be financially dependent on the “cats,” the “kashrut supervisors” will stop sticking their noses into our plates, and a redeemer will have come to supervision. 🙂

Best regards, A"B Sordman

The average person (even a religious one) has no tools to check what the word “kosher” means when it appears on a business—he has neither the halakhic expertise nor, usually, the time and energy to question the reliability of the supervising authority.

Just as the state makes sure that every food business is “hygienic” according to some objective criterion, and that a product displays its contents clearly and accurately (without hiding ingredients or listing them incorrectly), so too it seems to me that there is room for the label “kosher” to carry its objective meaning—which is certainly a concept with an Orthodox definition, and in my humble opinion that is the meaning most kosher consumers in the country refer to and want.

I don’t really see the difference between a regulator who makes sure that “what the body promises—it delivers,” and a regulator who makes sure that “if the body said kosher—it is kosher.” [Needless to say, perhaps this definition should be formulated not by Rabbinate personnel but by an external committee made up of the full Orthodox spectrum, but our issue here is the principle.]