Another glimpse at how certified products get to your table from the corners of the world

Photos: Rabbi Danny Moore

Meticulous attention to detail, a cool head, and high tolerance for long, uncomfortable journeys are all part of Rabbi Danny Moore’s work in international kashrus. From his very first job supervising an early-morning milking as a favor to a friend, Rabbi Moore was drawn into a world where one sharp glance — and a dose of Heavenly help — is the difference between kosher and treif. More than two decades and 51 countries later, he’s the kashrus director of Badatz Igud Harabbonim, the Manchester-based hechsher famously led by Dayan Osher Yaakov Westheim ztz”l, who was niftar earlier this year. The hechsher now continues under the supervision of the Dayan’s son-in-law, Rav Shulem Landau.
Last year, Mishpacha presented some of Rabbi Moore’s more interesting kashrus adventures, but after 22 years in the field, the stories don’t stop.

Stewing in Their Own Juice

Where: Kayseri, Turkey

I was once asked by two different mehadrin hechsherim, one based in the UK and one in the US, to represent them in supervising a production of orange and apple juices in Turkey.
The fruit juice factory, owned by a big Turkish entrepreneur, was situated next to the main mountain road that runs from the city of Kayseri to the city of Adana in the South. I flew from Manchester to Istanbul and then took an hour-and-a-half domestic flight to Kayseri airport, where I was met and driven to the plant. When I got there, I saw that the owner had built a gas station with his own gas pumps, a restaurant and service area, and a guest house right next to his factory. This attracted a lot of the truck drivers who stopped for a break on their way down to Adana.
He was obviously a capitalist and a shrewd businessman.
Like all mashgichim and visitors to his factory, I was put up in the guest house. In order to get to my room, I had to walk through the restaurant, and I noticed that the fridge of cold drinks there carried no Coke, Pepsi, or Schweppes — only the company’s own fruit juices.
Of course, I had done plenty research before I came. When you kasher a factory, you have to know exactly what you are koshering it from. Has it been used for dairy? For treif products? Or is it only used for non-problematic foods, in which case you are basically koshering “l’chumrah”?
There is a certain piece of filtration equipment that is extremely delicate and difficult to kasher, and our main concern was grape juice. In all our discussions with this company, they had told us that while they made apple, orange, apricot, and pomegranate juices, they haven’t produced grape juice for the last 20 years. And in fact, our online checks didn’t turn up any grape juices under their label. They did tell us that they had done a recent run of a kosher grape juice for a certain hechsher, but other than that, no grapes came into the factory.
The production began and all was going well.
A few days later, one of the managers asked me if I would be able to help them out by sending a sample of the recently produced kosher grape juice to the hechsher in question.
I explained that I would like to help them, but couldn’t, because I was not authorized to open the seals on that kosher product unless asked to do so by their rabbi.
Soon enough, I got a call from the rabbinical authority on that hechsher asking me to supervise the sample-taking of their product. And so, we went to the 50,000-liter tank of kosher grape juice, I unsealed the tape, took off a small sample, closed it and sealed it again. Then I was shown into the laboratory to pasteurize the grape juice and pour it into small sample bottles. I was required to do this for them, to prevent a problem of “stam yeinam,” which would make the grape juice forbidden.
I was about to close the sample bottles, when the non-Jew said to me, “Can I just add something?”
He was holding a small bottle of grape flavor.
I said, “You can’t add that, it’s not kosher. And, if you do, the end product won’t match this sample.”
He said, “Don’t worry about that, rabbi.”
I told him that I would only seal it as it is, and I would not add anything. Okay, it got sent off as it was. But I realized that I was dealing with cheaters.
My antennae were up. I looked all over the factory for evidence of grape juice production, which would mean that the machinery was used for “stam yeinam.” But I couldn’t find anything, and I had to be very careful lest they realize I was suspicious. I spoke to the fellows lower down on the line, the factory workers, but I wasn’t able to ferret out any information.
The industrial boiler in this factory ran on coal. During the winter, they sometimes had stoppages due to the coal getting wet, and that happened one day while I was there. The manager let me know that we would have to wait a couple of hours, as production would be halted while the boiler was cleaned out.
Most of the staff went home, and it seemed like a good opportunity to poke around. I decided to check out the warehouse to see the pallets that had been prepared for shipment. The warehouse was a huge underground storage area, the size of the entire factory. Security was fairly tight, few people were allowed in, but my excuse was that I wanted to see how many pallets of juice we had already produced. I asked Mehmed, the production manager, he agreed to get the key from someone, and we went down the steps and through a heavy metal door.
He showed me our product. I counted them, checked them, sealed them, and marked them, then I started walking through the other dozens of aisles.
“Do you need to see something?” he asked me.
“No, I’m just looking around.”
“Okay.”
Then, a minute later, Mehmed said he needed to go upstairs for something.
Even better, I thought. But two minutes after the production manager left me, the lights throughout the warehouse suddenly went off. It was pitch black, a cavernous underground room, and the aisles all looked the same.