a few examples...

Question

Here are a few reasons why it is irresponsible to rule on the kashrus of a product based on the ingridiants alone. I'd like to hear your thoughss. EXAMPLE 1 - Yankel writes in about in about a product called Rublubs. He lists the ingrediants, but OOPS, purposly or not, he leaves out an ingrediant or two, and wouldn't you know it, the ingrediants Yankel neglects to mention are 100 percent treif. Rabbi AA, acting in good faith, sees the partial list Yankel provided (the list that ommited some key ingrediants) and rules RUBLUBS are KOSHER. Now, because of Yankel's mistake, everyone who relies on Kashrut.org thinks that RUBLUBS are kosher, when in fact they are not. EXAMPLE 2 The Hooper company makes something called Quobbles, and this time, when Yankel writes in to ask if Quobbles are kosher, he lists all of the ingrediants. Rabbi AA looks at the list, sees that everything is OK, and rules correctly that Quobbles are kosher. Now everyone who relies on kashrut.org thinks that Quobbles are kosher... so what happens three months later when the Hooper company "improves" its product by adding a treif ingridient. Now what? All the kashrut.org adherents were told that Quabbles were kosher. Who's going to let the kashrut.org readers know that the ingrediants were changed? The OU would simply pull its hashgacha - and send out an alert. How is AA supposed to take back his ruling, now that the ingrediants have changed? EXAMPLE 3 The Hooper company has a sharp bean-counter type serving as product manager for the Quabbles line. His predecessor printed up lots and lots of labels for the old version of the product, and "gosh darn it," the product manager says,"we're going to use up every last one of those lables before we print new ones." Even though the ingiridants changed? Yes, happens all the time. So what are the kashrut.org readers supposed to do, now that AA has ruled that Quabbles are kosher based on the old label, and not the new ingrediants? EXAMPLE 4 The Hooper company is losing sales, so they decide to improve one of their products, something called, Yoplles. But they don't want to spend alot of money announcing the new product - not yet anyway. First they decide to test it. And shrewd marketers that they are, the Hooper company elects to run the test blindly, that is they change the ingridiants, but they don't change the labels. After all, they reason, this is the best wey to determine if we've really made the product better. Is this against FDA rules? Probably. But, it's all self-regulated anyway (the FDA doesn't have an office testing all products to make sure that the labels accurately reflect the ingridiants) and besides its only a three month test. The OU would be on top of this, and let peopel know. Who is going to tell the kashrut.org people that - at least during the test - Yoplles are treif? The advatages of a hechsher are obvious. Why are you training people to ignore them?