Is It Kosher?
By Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz — a comprehensive guide to the kosher status of hundreds of common foods, ingredients, and food categories.
Do You Know What You Are Eating?
The process by which ingredients are produced must be carefully checked. It is necessary to check the processing locations to verify that hygienic standards are not so lax as to allow insects or worms to contaminate the food product. Unfortunately, lax hygiene in food processing is more common than people wish to believe.
The food defect action levels set by the FDA are set on the basis of no hazard to health. The defect action levels are set because it is not possible, and never has been possible, to grow in open fields, harvest, and process crops that are totally free of natural defects. The following list illustrates some of the tolerance levels permitted by the FDA for common food products:
- Allspice: Average 5% or more berries moldy by weight
- Apple Butter: Average mold count 12% or more; 4+ rodent hairs per 100g; 5+ whole insects per 100g
- Chocolate: Average 60+ microscopic insect fragments per 100g; 1+ rodent hair per 100g in 6 subsamples
- Peanut Butter: Average 30+ insect fragments per 100g; 1+ rodent hair per 100g
- Tomatoes, Canned: Average 10+ fly eggs per 500g; or 5+ fly eggs and 1+ maggots per 500g
This FDA list shows the maximum government tolerance when it comes to insects found in food, and illustrates clearly how we often are not aware of what we are eating. This is a critical reminder for the kosher consumer to rely only on properly supervised products.