NEW KOSHER LAW IN GEORGIA (USA)

From Kosher Today (April 26, 2010)

Disclosure Model of Kosher Food Laws Spreads, Latest is Georgia
New York…Georgia became the latest state to adopt the disclosure model of legislation to protect kosher consumers after New York’s century-old kosher protect bill was ruled unconstitutional in 2003. With only two days left to the session, the Georgia House of Representatives joined the Senate in passing the Georgia Kosher Food Consumer Protection Act, which replaces the current kosher labeling laws. The new law is modeled after the New Jersey law (replaced law ruled

unconstitutional

in 1992), that was later adopted by New York and several other states in requiring the posting of standards used when making representations of kosher. The current law in Georgia faced a First Amendment challenge brought by the ACLU and a Conservative rabbi.

While some critics have sought to discredit the disclosure model as “irrelevant” in an era of customer awareness, the reality is that the law does protect kosher consumers. (Emphasis ours) In New York alone, sources say that inspectors of the New York State Kosher Law Enforcement Bureau routinely discover instances of where unsuspecting kosher consumers are duped. They say that during the just concluded Passover holiday many items that are kosher but not kosher for Passover were placed on shelves that were marked Kosher for Passover.
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A popular magazine urged its readers to contact the Georgia Attorney General and call upon him to resist this challenge to the State’s kosher laws. We are most pleased that the court properly saw this as a Constitutional issue and consumer protection issue. As the article in Kosher Today shows, “the reality is that the law does protect kosher consumers.”