Is This Better?

all this weaving and dodging....

it is simple. if jewish people want their food to be certified by a rabbi(or their draino), then jewish people should pay extra, and that cost should be built into the product.
it is a crime to steal 'kosher tax' from the non-jewish population.

otherwise, we'll have to start paying muslim clerics for halal, herbsmen for rastafarian 'blessings', something there but not there for zen buddhists, etc.....

religious tax is unconstitutional, biased, unfair, and plain wrong.

Originally posted by corsig
I'm Jewish and I really did not find anything wrong with this post.
By the way I'm also a Mason so am I going to get in trouble for sticking up for him

I just wanted to take a second here to give you a big thumbs up thank you for crossing the picket line and sticking your neck out here. You have my respects.

You have voted corsig for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have one more vote left for this month.

Originally posted by twitchy

Originally posted by corsig
I'm Jewish and I really did not find anything wrong with this post.
By the way I'm also a Mason so am I going to get in trouble for sticking up for him

I just wanted to take a second here to give you a big thumbs up thank you for crossing the picket line and sticking your neck out here. You have my respects.

You have voted corsig for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have one more vote left for this month.

No need to thank me Twitchy I was only saying what I thought was right now if you say something I don't agree with at least you know I can be a fair guy. As long as you can back up what you say (which I think you hvae done) then you are cool.

Cory

Originally posted by billybob
wow.
just found this thread, twitchy.
great stuff. i'll have to read the whole thread when i have more time.

Thanks billybob and welcome to one of my more controversial threads here, the original one actually got closed (hence the title) and I have caught alot of flack for it, even had one mason on here posting holocaust pictures. But I stand by everything I have said here.
I'm even considering calling General Mills and others to tell them I need them to start paying me to come in and inspect their products, suppliers and packaging and transportation services to make sure that I am not exposed to any Alien feces contaminants. It's my GOD GIVEN right as a Melungeon. If I'm successful and in the future if you see a product in the store that has a Circle M on it, then you know it's the same product, just more expensive because its bonifide Melungenic. Don't say anything about it either or I will send you pictures of Wounded Knee and demonize you, maybe even sue you for being an anti-Melungeonite.
Melungeons of the World Unite!

A few tid bits of information in the news lately...

China is being slowly sucked into the Kosher Scam as well...

Source
The agencies, namely the Orthodox Union (OU), OK Certification, and the Star-K maintain a full-time presence in China, including fully-staffed offices in some cases. They frequently fly in mashgichim (supervisors) from Israel in what one agency called “a necessity given the growing number of companies we certify in a vast geographic area.”
Approximately 90% of the products certified in China are ingredient items. Israel is also a large importer of the ingredients and packaged foods, manufactured under private label. The agencies say that their staff includes local citizens who fully understand the language and culture of the country, “an invaluable tool in the kosher certification process.”

The Chinese infatuation with kosher stems from their increased business with the U.S. food industry, which most often requires a kosher certified ingredient. The ingredient producers in China and elsewhere around the world are increasingly being shut out of the US market unless their products have proper kosher certification.

Walmart is expected to see about 3 million in Kosher Foods this summer, it's probably alot more than that once you realize that damned nearly every item in their store at some point in it's production sees some sort of Kosher Certification given that such Industries as Steel and Cleaning Products are included in the racket.

Source
The Wal-Mart Supercenter in Monticello is the other popular location in the capital of the Catskills for kosher consumers. “All Wal-Mart strives to be is a store of the community, reflecting products that customers in their communities are requesting, and this is illustrated in our kosher food selections in our Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets across the country. You will see different selections offered in different stores based on what the customers in that community are requesting,” said Karen Burk, spokeswoman for Wal-Mart. For instance, the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Monticello offers more than 700 different kosher items (including cholov Yisrael milk and glatt kosher meats) for customers during the summer months when the demand in that community is high.
Wal-Mart alone is estimated at doing more than $3 million in kosher food sales during the summer months.

"customers in that community are requesting." Yeah right, I'm no demographics expert but three percent of the population couldn't get a petition carried, let alone bend a major coporation into offering religous taylored products.

Source
Jelly Belly jelly beans will be certified kosher by the Orthodox Union...
Buzz around town is about Dunkin Donuts and whether or not the Brooklyn locations are kosher. According to an ad in The Jewish Press print edition only two locations are no longer certified kosher -- the one on Avenue J and East 15th Street and the store on Avenue U and 86th Street (both in Brooklyn). Please be sure to check each individual store for a kashrus certificate before patronizing.

Jelly beans are going to get a little more expensive in other words, and if you like Dunkin Doughnuts, you have only two locations in NY now to patronize if you don't like the idea of giving money to this scam. Odd they print the locations of these two stores which smells a little like a protection racket to me, as eventually they may end up on a site like this one or worse, in the media.

Source
Kosher fruits from Kingsburg Orchards bear a new PLU label featuring the "OU" symbol of the Orthodox Union, the world's largest kosher certifying agency. The Orthodox Union is recognized for enforcing one of the strictest kosher standards on the market today. Meeting that standard required a lengthy process and significant investment from Kingsburg Orchards.

"This certification enables us to connect with the traditions of the Jewish community, which considers the observance of keeping Kosher to be a key way of making a Jewish home 'Jewish,'" said Dan Spain, Vice President of Marketing for Kingsburg Orchards.

"At the same time, millions of other consumers -- regardless of faith -- perceive Kosher food as being healthier and cleaner, giving our Certified Kosher fruits selling power beyond the Jewish community," Spain said.

According to recent research, Kosher certification appears on over 60% of American food products and currently accounts for more than $150 billion in annual sales -- a figure that is rising dramatically.

60% of American Foods taxed to satisfy the religous 'needs' of 3% of the population creating a multi-billion dollar tax sheltered federally regulated religous profit. A gallon milk here in my locality is almost five dollars now, apparently supporting a multi-billion dollar industry is expensive.

Source
Many rabbinical supervisors have become more attentive to labeling issues, but the problem seems to occur more often in companies where there is no mashgiach temidi (on-site rabbinical supervisor as opposed to rabbis who periodically visit a plant), which prompted one rabbi to suggest that a mashgiach temidi should be required where kosher and non-kosher products are produced in the same plant. Mislabeling, it appears, accounts for a good percentage of kashrus alerts issued by kashrus agencies, which are also featured on such web sites as www.kashrut.com and in various kashrus newsletters.


So apparently some food companies have to hire an on-site rabbinical supervisor (at their expense, and ultimately of course, at your expense, their services tend to cost a company around $40,000 and $50,000a year as a salary, not to mention the costs of the certifications themselves).

Source
Sullivan County's only hospital is going far beyond a kosher menu to bridge the cultural gap between its medical staff and Orthodox Jewish patients.

To get ready for the arrival of 200,000 summer residents, many of them Orthodox Jews, Catskill Regional Medical Center has trained its employees and modified its facilities to accommodate Orthodox customs.

For the first time, more than 200 nurses, doctors and department heads have undergone cultural sensitivity training to learn about Orthodox Jewish law.

At their expense of course, and ultimately again, at the expense of the other patients who aren't Jewish. Kosher Health Care...

If I were a betting man, I would put some money on being able to show a well defined correlation between the explosive growth of the Kosher Protection Racket and the expense of feeding the average family. Just in my lifetime I've seen our grocery bill literally quadrouple, and as to Kosher certification, what just a few products not more than a decade ago has become nearly everything we buy at the local market.
Take the Twitchy Challenge and next time you are at your local grocer, see if you can avoid buying any Kosher products and still come out of there with your usual fare. It's damn near impossible.
Apologists for this practice will say it only averages out to some miniscule .000003% or some ridiculous number, aside from the fact they pulled that number out of their arses, the thing you have to realize about averages is that if this was figured on a per product, and you average say wrapped toothpicks and Automobiles together, of course the average is going to work out to .000003%. Sorry, but I understand statistics a little better than that, it's a scam and it's a multi-billion dollar a year scam, I don't care what it averages out to.

[edit on 7-7-2007 by twitchy]

so a few hundred years ago when everyone had mites and rotting teeth, did they do all the kosher food inspections?
If its part of their religion how did they enforce such lunacy for food prep back before steralization techniques?
sounds like a racket to me. just cause u buy it dont get mad if someone calls you stupid for it.

My freaking dish soap has the circled U on it!
My dish soap is kosher?
AJAX lemon scented dish soap needs inspected by Rabbis to make sure its 'clean'?

Originally posted by 11Bravo
AJAX lemon scented dish soap needs inspected by Rabbis to make sure its 'clean'?

Yup, ain't that a dish?
Not only the soap, but probably the plastic container it comes in as well. From obscure ancient meat laws in Deuteronomy right into your modern day pocket. The old folks called it Kosher Nostra and it was a pretty well known scam.
I saw a reference to it in an old episode of the Twilight Zone recently, the one with the Television Repairman who did something to the guys tv where he could see his future in it. The main character accuses the repairman of running a scam, 'a real Kosher Nostra' I think he said.
Pay attention to the various labels for kosher as well, as the information slowly leaks out to the public they are beginning to use other symbols, I've seen a couple that looked more like crests or heralds than a K, star or a U which turned out to be Kosher taxed as well. Also there are alot of items which are marked kosher on the bulk packaging but not on the individual items like bakery items and the like.
It's a multi-Billion dollar industry in the US alone, globally, who the hell knows what kind of money they make on it. But I do know that my grocery bill is becomming financially unbearable, I do know that I'm not jewish, and I know that I don't like paying extra for anything.

Saw this graph on an article showing the rise in food prices for this year...



This rise is generally blamed on inflation and the late freeze, etc. but oddly enough the Kosher industry continues to grow by the billions.

Yuck, someone did some thread necromancy and brought this thing back up?

First, read this, to put things in perspective:
www.snopes.com...

If the quoted number above ($40-$45k per YEAR) for Kosher certification is even accurate (and I have no idea if it is or not), that is a ridiculously small amount of money for a company like, say, Proctor and Gamble, to pay to obtain business from Orthodox and Conservative Jews that they would not have otherwise obtained. Huge companies like P&G and food companies typically pay millions of dollars per month for advertising... $45k per year is a drop in the bucket.

If you're upset about the cost of your food, you should be complaining about the price of oil or the fact that most grocery stores are unionized, and hence have extra cost built into their markups, or anything that actually affects the prices you are paying.

I'm not upset about the rising food costs, I'm pissed off that I pay extra for my groceries, and god knows what all else, in order for them to be fit for obscure jewish meat laws. It's a defacto government regulatred religous taxation, and I'm not Jewish.
I've read that damage control crap on Snopes, and if you read the whole thread you would know its been posted here already and that I also shredded it. Regardless of what snopes is selling you, it's a multi-billion dollar protection racket and scam perpetrated by a 3% of the population which amazingly by their own admission it is of profit making concern and does not represent a difference in the quality of the product. Snopes is bologna.


[edit on 15-8-2007 by twitchy]

As I mentioned, it's pretty low cost marketing for the food companies. Do you also get mad that P&G - as an example - spends millions of dollars per month on advertising? That has a direct impact on the cost of your food. It would be hard to measure the impact of $45k on your food cost; it's less than 1% of the total marketing budget of the average conglomerate.

Is your problem just that a company is marketing specifically to Jewish people? You realize there is a lot of ethnic centered advertising going on, right (to African Americans and Hispanic Americans, for example)? Does that bother you as well, or do you just have a problem with marketing to Jewish people? I'd venture a guess that those food companies spend a lot more money on African American centered advertising than they do on Jewish centered advertising, considering that blacks are a much larger % of the American population.

Edit:
I found this really interesting archived Usenet post from a guy who was a Product Manager for Kraft Foods, who explains the reasoning behind why companies do this (and he says their cost for certifying was $10,000):
www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/antisemitism/ftp.py?antisemitism/kosher-tax/usenet.0696


[edit on 8/16/2007 by JustMe74]

reply to post by JustMe74

First off thanks for the bump.
If its really about advertising and marketing, then why do they differentiate between mainstream and ethnic kosher products, or take kosher labeling out of mainstream advertisments? 3% of a given population, most of which don't even keep kosher traditions, creates such an enormous market that well over sixty percent of our food stuffs have to be fit for jewish consumption? If it's about advertising and marketing, then why do you suppose this certification, by their own admission, represents no real difference in the quality of the products? Why do some other countries give their citizens a tax credit for kosher expenses they incur? If its about advertising, how come nobody knows what the hell those little K's and U's and Parve's represent on their food packaging? Hogwash, it's a scam at best, at worst its a protection racket that rakes in billions of dollars a year in the US alone.
Why beat around the bush making terribly moot comparisons of this kosher scam to advertising and marketing costs, and just say what you really mean, post some holocaust pictures and call me an antisemite. Let's not waste time.

I don't know how you can say it's NOT marketing related. The companies themselves say it's for marketing purposes. I see no problem with a company, if they have a good business case for doing so, spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 - $40,000 a year (depending on which numbers are accurate) to gain a few hundred thousand (at least) extra sales. Seems like cheap marketing to me, compared to other ways that companies market their products.

If you don't think that companies are doing it to increase their sales, then why do you think they're doing it? We're talking about huge food products corporations... everything they do, they do for their bottom line.

I'm done with this thread, by the way. I think anyone without an agenda (i.e. anyone who is not trying to suggest that "The Jews" control the banks, media, and apparently, food products) who looks into this will agree with what I've said.

What a surprise, yet another freemason comes forward to defend the Kosher scam by trying to flavor this thread with subtle accusations of antisemitism. Dissapointing really, I thought perhaps someone had just stepped up out of the blue to speak here, which would have been a potentiate for a decent debate perhaps. Nope just another ma ha bologna.
How odd that ATS Freemasonry is about the only people that have replied in dissent so far. Not so odd however, when you understand the connection between zionism and freemasonry. "Giving back to the community" implies something has been taken from them to begin with, blood and money.


Now, I know all I need to know about your Kosher opinions just by that avatar, your point is moot and your bias is square.

Meanwhile in the real world where people are paying out of their gentile pockets....

Source
Besides using a kosher label on Winn-Dixie brand milk, its private label orange juices, teas and Chek sodas will now display the kosher symbol. Thrifty Maid beverages, Premium fruit drinks and Prestige ice cream flavors are also kosher certified.

Winn-Dixie began its kosher initiative last year when it reached an agreement with a kosher certification agency, and this April opened a new certified kosher deli and bakery in Tamarac. In addition, most stores that have recently undergone remodeling are now stocking an expanded selection of kosher products.

Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. (NASDAQ: WINN) emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November.

Kosher Vending Machines
Wonder how long before regular vending machines will require this certification?

Kosher Dairy Prices Soar Around the World
There's a surprise.

PRINCIPAL NOT KOSHER: MUSLIM
Hmmmmm...

Rabbis, meat watchdog stand by kosher practices
No Pain, No gain.

Federal Judge Orders Prison to Keep Kosher
Federal Judge mind you.

The growing kosher market is prompting manufacturers in countries without much local demand to gain certification so they can export to the high-potential US
Marketing my arse.

Kosher Employment...

“Kosher is the most humane way to slaughter an animal,” Tiechtel says. “That’s why many non-Jews are becoming kosher. The animal doesn’t feel one iota of pain.”
Yeah its much better to hang them upside down and slit their throats than to stun them first.

And most disgusting of todays articles...
More Than Half Of U.S. Food Companies Are Potentials For Kosher Certification

I guess my question is: Who cares?

I mean seriously, how much do you think you are losing per month due to Kosher foods? Is it really affecting people as much as you make it out to? Are there really that many people out there who are bent out of shape about it?

I know you started this thread a long time ago, and I still wondered the same thing then. I probably have some posts buried somewhere in this thread, I really don't remember, but the question remains the same:

What is the big deal?

If you don't like it, buy products that don't have the kosher stamp!

How hard is that?

Originally posted by The Axeman
How hard is that?

Damned near impossible, that's my point.

Originally posted by twitchy

Originally posted by The Axeman
How hard is that?

Damned near impossible, that's my point.

OK, so alot of companies have gone kosher to allow Jews (or others who want their products kosher) into their target market.

Again, who cares? It brings me to my initial questions:

1. How much $$$ do you think you are losing per month due to being "forced" to buy Kosher products?

2. Is it really financially affecting people as much as you make it out to?

3. Are there really that many people out there who are bent out of shape about it?

Maybe you could start a company whose appeal is that absolutley *none* or the products are kosher? Do you think such a company would do well? They could make it easier for people such as yourself to find and purchase non-kosher products, but due to the services rendered, your products would probably be marked up from what they would be originally, so...

Six of one, half-dozen of the other.

I'm really interested in what you think you are losing monetarily to kosher products. Could it really be that big a difference in price of the kosher products than if they were *not* kosher?

I wonder how many times the word "kosher" has appeared in this thread.

I say again:

Originally posted by The Axeman
1. How much $$$ do you think you are losing per month due to being "forced" to buy Kosher products?

2. Is it really financially affecting people as much as you make it out to?

3. Are there really that many people out there who are bent out of shape about it?

reply to post by twitchy


I gave you a star thingy for making the effort. Please, however, use papagraphs next time, your post hurts my eyes!

[edit on 21-9-2007 by JimmyBlonde]