From the December 2003 Idaho Observer:

“Kosher Nostra” demands protection money from processed food, beverage producers in trade for product approval

Rabbinical societies bless poisonous products in widespread strongarm scam

All consumers of processed and packaged foods and beverages should be reading product labels. Modern processing techniques commonly include trace amounts of chemicals said to preserve, prevent separation (or caking and clumping), prolong freshness or enhance the flavors found in the product. Many of these chemicals are synthetics that do not metabolize properly in the body and can accumulate in various organs. These deposits can irritate organ tissues that become inflamed and develop into infections leading to chronic conditions such as cancer and heart disease.

Science and experience have shown how various synthetic sweeteners, flavor enhancers, product stabilizers and preservatives are cumulative toxins, yet products that contain them are marketed by major processed food and beverage corporations with the approval of the U.S. government. Most of those major corporations also seek the blessing of a group that we will, for the purpose of this article, call the “Kosher Nostra.” There is an ironic twist to this story that will be revealed in due course.

by Don Harkins

If you look in your own pantry or up and down the aisles of your neighborhood supermarket, you will notice that nearly every household-word name-brand food, beverage or soap has a little (K) or a little (U) inside of a circle discretely displayed on the label. These symbols indicate a product is “certified kosher” and are issued by rabbinical societies for a fee.

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations (UOJC) with headquarters at 333 Seventh Avenue in New York City, has reportedly sewn up 85 percent of the kosher certification market in America. Jewish people are instructed to consume only those products that are certified kosher.

This is how a religious sect is able to run what may well be the most successful private extortion racket in America. Major corporations are compelled to pay the yearly kosher certification fee or lose their access to Jewish consumers. To maintain their certification status, the corporation must hire, at their own expense, independent production supervisors to inspect production processes to insure kosher standards are maintained. Some companies, such as cheese manufacturers, must have full-time rabbis on staff to perform specific functions during the production process.

The UOJC employs some 1,200 kosher cops in America. Ernesto Cienfueges of the Hispanic newspaper La Voz de Aztlan recently reported that, when asked what they pay in “kosher tax,” major corporations such as Proctor & Gamble and Clorox were not willing to say.

However, in 1975 the New York Times reported that the cost to General Foods' “Bird's Eye” Corn, for example, is 6.5 millionths (.0000065) of a cent per unit. In 2002 the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in an effort to justify the kosher certification industry reported how “a representative of the Heinz Company said that the per item cost is 'so small we can't even calculate it,' and that such labeling actually makes products less costly by increasing the market for them.”

The amount may seem small, but so do most taxes. The devil is in the mathematical details. Depending upon whether a “unit” is a package or the number of things, such individual kernels of peas or corn in a package, the revenue generated from kosher certification, if every American purchased an average of 35 kosher products per week, would be somewhere between $117,554,118 and $58 billion over the last 35 years. If the UOJC would just tell us the numbers, such conjecture would not be necessary.

The ADL report went on to label anyone who believes kosher certification to be anything other than a process intended to protect the purity of food as “anti-Semitic.”

In contrast to the ADL view of kosher certification, former prominent New York business broker Michael Santomauro commented, “One of the major unspoken reasons for anti-Semitism in the business world is the kosher tax.”

Santomauro indicated that he knows a lot about what he calls the “kosher” tax. “Someday, I will tell the full story about the kosher tax that we are all forced to pay,” he said.

What is kosher?

Kosher is an adaptation of a Hebrew word that means “fit” or “proper.” A basic guideline is that milk and meat are never to be combined. Products identified as “pareve,” a Hebrew word for neutral, are fruits, vegetables and grains that are neither meat, poultry nor dairy products. Kosher foods fall within the guidelines of Jewish dietary laws. What determines kosher vs. non-kosher is the source of the ingredients and the status of the production equipment.

The ADL reported that many non-Jews, particularly vegans, prefer kosher foods because kosher certification is analogous with purity and quality.

Jewish dietary laws date back to Adam and Eve and were established a few millennia before food was mass processed and packaged. The list of products which boast kosher certification may contain the correct combination, or separation of ingredients and may be produced with equipment that meets kosher specifications, but contain chemicals and additives that are not natural and are toxic to humans.

Ironically, small, organic food and beverage companies that maintain a high standard of product purity rarely indicate kosher on their labels though Jewish and non-Jewish people alike purchase and consume them. At .0000065 of a cent per item, it would take the UOJC a long time to earn a dollar from a company that sells under 100,000 units a year.

People who consume products certified by the UOJC as “kosher” are paying for the privilege of consuming products that contain toxic preservatives and additives not excluded from Jewish dietary laws. For some reason, it has not occurred to the Jewish clergy to update dietary laws to meet the demands of modern food manufacturing processes.

The promised twist to this story is that the UOJC is content to charge major food and beverage companies a fee so they can fool Jewish people into consuming their products as “fit” and “pure” within religious standards when, in fact, they are unfit and impure by biological standards. If our bodies are temples of God, then the UOJC is deriving revenue from taxes it imposes on food and beverage companies to aid in the for-profit destruction of God's temples.