Q&A: The Kashrut of Suspicions
The Kashrut of Suspicions
Question
With God's help,
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask you a question about a topic that I really don’t know in Jewish law: matters of kashrut and mixtures and the like.
Many times rabbis prohibit products that aren’t certified kosher abroad because of various concerns.
For example, a bottle of 100% natural orange juice may be prohibited abroad because, according to the standards there, there is no obligation to list an ingredient if it makes up less than 2% of the product. So who knows what they might be adding. The same goes for any product that does not involve food cooked by non-Jews, and whose ingredients are each kosher in themselves—maybe they add something else too (as they are allowed to) and don’t write it. Or perhaps the heating system is steam, for example, and it also includes other non-kosher products in the same system, and everything becomes non-kosher, and so on and so on.
So I wanted to ask whether it is indeed proper to take all these perhaps-concerns into account in a situation of some degree of pressing need (for example, someone who is abroad and has difficulty obtaining a kosher product)?
Answer
Absolutely yes. If you don’t know what you’re eating—don’t eat it.
Discussion on Answer
I really don’t understand. There are sensitivities like gluten that can also be dangerous at such doses. You need to ask people who deal with kashrut and know the field.
It says so explicitly here:
Note that major food allergens (as discussed on pages 20-24), regardless
of whether they are present in the food in trace amounts, must be declared.
By the way, after I felt it was very puzzling that abroad they supposedly don’t need to write all the ingredients on the product, I checked the FDA standards. And this is what is said there—that any minute ingredient that has no functional or technical effect on the finished product does not have to be mentioned among the product’s ingredients.
Even so, it’s a little hard for me to understand why they would add it to the product in that case. But the example they give is sulfites (usually a preservative), such that if it has no technical purpose then it does not have to be listed, unless it is in an amount smaller than 10 ppm. We’re talking about an order of magnitude of one in a hundred thousand….
Do the laws of nullification apply at such quantities to something that has no real purpose? Even though it was added intentionally from the outset, but usually for other non-Jewish consumers.
Is it necessary to declare ingredients in “trace”, i.e., incidental amounts?
Can sulfites be considered incidental additives?
Answer: FDA does not define “trace amounts”, however, there are some
exemptions for declaring ingredients present in “incidental” amounts in a finished
food. If an ingredient is present at an incidental level and has no functional or
technical effect in the finished product, then it need not be declared on the label.
An incidental additive is usually present because it is an ingredient of another
ingredient. Note that major food allergens (as discussed on pages 20-24), regardless
of whether they are present in the food in trace amounts, must be declared.
Sulfites added to any food or to any ingredient in any food and that has no
technical effect in that food are considered to be incidental only if present at
less than 10 ppm. 21 CFR 101.100(a)(3) & (4)