KOSHER PET FOOD???

Over on the UTJ-L discussion list (the oldest and liveliest internet discussion list), the latest discussion centers on a pet food company that calls itself KosherPets. The following comes from their home page:

“Clean ~ Healthy ~ Fit (common synonyms for “kosher”)

“Our products are made with carefully selected table food quality ingredients and sourced at USDA inspected and approved facilities. Furthermore, we are exposing ourselves to one of the strictest human food and ingredients inspections available ? KOSHER! Kosher standards prohibit eating scavengers and mixing meat and dairy products.

“No other pet food company is going through such extraordinary efforts to offer you and your pet the healthiest diet. KosherPets’ products are the ONLY ones endorsed as kosher by one of the largest and most respected kosher certifying agencies in North America.”

At the tail end of their wonderful tale of kosher pet food, you discover that THE STUFF IS NOT KOSHER FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION.

Whoa! Stop da music, stop da music!! (thank you, Jimmy)

Kosher for pets?

We understand that food could be halachically acceptable for a Jewish person to feed his/her dog or cat, or not acceptable (ie, if it contains a mixture of meat and milk which is forbidden), but kosher for pets but not for humans? Is that a new kind of category? Hmm, so now we have kosher, glatt kosher, heimishe kosher, and pet kosher?

A tragic fact is that in this land of plenty, there are people who eat dog food because they are poor. Are we so arrogant as to believe that no Jewish people eat dog food (hallevei!!)?

Isn’t this just a whole lot misleading? It seems to us that this advertising is very much guilty of g’nayvat hadaat (theft of ability to draw a rational conclusion), one of the Chafetz Chaim’s categories of forbidden speech.

Frankly, we are stunned that a responsible kashruth agency would allow this sort of thing to to take place.

(RJR)