WHAT A COINCIDENCE!

A certain magazine that deals with issue of “kashrus” recently ran an ad for a machine that will sift up to five pounds of flour at a time to make sure that you don’t get any bugs in your flour.

In truth, the US Gov’t allows a certain amount of “defect”‘ in products. Defect refers to mouse droppings, bugs, bug parts, etc. The amount of defect is a strictly set limit that is enforced.

In the bakery we supervise, we have long sifted our flour. In truth, almost never do we find any level of defect in the flour as we buy from a provider who is very careful with his product. We use 50 pound bags of flour and those bags are very clean of defect.

The magazine we read tells of a growing problem concerning flour. It seems that they are hearing from lots of people that people are finding all manner of defect in their five pound bag of flour.

Now here comes the best part: that issue of the magazine just so happens to have a big ad for a new machine that will sift the defects out of your flour. How convenient! First they tell us that more and more people are finding defects in their flour (ie, create the latest crisis) and then they tell
us that they have a solution that will save us from bug consumption.

Seriously folks, we know that we are forbidden to eat bugs. We know that there is a serious problem with much that is out there on the market. We just don’t think that “many” people are finding major levels of defect in their flour. Of course, any level of defect is a halachic problem. But spend money on a machine to do what we can do ourselves in just minutes? Pardon us if we remain just a tad suspicious on this one!