Kosher Certification is NOT a Kosher Tax

Firstly, I would like to accept my opponent's invitation not stray from the subject of the kosher tax in order to engage in a debate on the scriptures, not least of all because I have very little knowledge of them and my opening passage was based upon a article by Rabbi Pinchas Frankel, an Educational Coordinator at the Orthodox Union (OU), who wrote: "Hashem had declared in Devarim 25:17-19 'eternal war' against Amalek (Palestinians), and commanded the Jewish People, once they achieved stability in the Land of Israel, the Promised Land, to erase the name of Amalek" http://www.ou.org... I apologise for assuming this miserable impostor was a reliable source of information and I urge readers never to trust anything they are told by the OU or its employees in the future. Now, to answer the points my opponent made: 1 – "You DO NOT pay extra for Kosher Certification…It is a marketing decision." The selling price of a product is reached on a cost plus basis. The manufacturer takes the costs of the raw materials, the processing, the packaging, the labor, etc. plus the marketing and adds them together, then adds a percentage on top of the total as a profit margin, in order to reach the selling price. Clearly, if their costs (including the cost of kosher certification) were lower, their selling prices would be. This "marketing advantage" fallacy that is so often used to mislead the public into believing that kosher certification is not a de facto tax doesn't bear up to logical analysis. As there are a similar number of Muslims and Jews in the US (each approximately 1% of the total population), why then don't manufacturers seek to certificate their products as halal (the Islamic equivalent to kosher kashrut) in order to gain a similar "marketing advantage"? In the Kosher Nostra Scam on the American Consumer by Ernesto Cienfuegos La Voz de Aztlan the author wrote: "I learned that major food companies throughout America actually pay a Jewish Tax amounting to hundreds of million of dollars per year in order to receive protection. This hidden tax gets passed, of course, to all non-Jewish consumers of the products. The scam is to coerce the companies to pay up or suffer the consequences of a Jewish boycott…. The "Kosher Nostra" protection racket starts when an Orthodox Rabbi approaches a company to warn the owners that unless their product is certified as kosher…they will face a boycott by every Jew in America. Most, if not all of the food companies, succumb to the blackmail because of fear of the Jewish dominated media and a boycott that may eventually culminate in bankruptcy." http://www.aztlan.net... It is interesting to note, that in European countries such as the UK where the offence of demanding money with menaces is a serious criminal offence, kosher products are produced by a small number of specialist manufacturers and are only available in kosher shops or in the kosher sections of supermarkets - even though a similar percentage of the population to that of the US is Jewish http://www.kosher.org.uk... 2 – "You assume that Rabbis simply give blessings to make food kosher " I did not mean to imply that the rabbis' fees where the only cost associated with kosher certification and I thank my opponent for his enlightening explanation of the process involved. 3 – "In terms of full disclosure, my father happens to be the CTO of the OU, the largest (by far) Kosher certification organization in the world… little or no profit (the OU is a non-profit organization) is made by doing it." I am familiar with the Orthodox Union (OU), as we know, and having been duped by one of their rabbis once already in this debate, I decided to check my opponent's assertions using more reliable sources. As a result of my investigations, I can confirm that the OU does not, indeed, distribute profits to shareholders but it does fund various projects such as yeshivas (Jewish religious schools). http://www.thejewishweek.com... The OU also funds the Institute for Public Affairs which supports US aid to Israel but opposes US aid to Palestine. http://israelipalestinian.procon.org... http://www.ouradio.org... Consumers may or may not believe these projects are worthwhile, but regardless, they are obliged to donate to them every time they buy one of the 400,000 separate products with the OU's (U) kosher tax symbol on the label. http://www.koshergourmetmart.com... 4 – "I am glad you brought up items like Organic… The producers of Organic products must pay a fee to be certified…You actually do pay extra for Organic….other groups benefit from Kosher certification as well" I have no doubt that kosher food, like organic food, is healthier than average and I agree that organic food, like kosher food is more expensive as the result of the cost of certification. However, organic goods are far less prevalent in the aisles of American supermarkets than kosher certified items – shoppers would have to go to great lengths to avoid purchasing any one of the 400,000 different kosher tax products on sale! To end his argument, my opponent wrote: "The fact of the matter is the idea that Kosher certification is a "Jewish Tax" is clearly an anti-Jewish one intent on stirring up animosity towards Jews." I have clearly demonstrated that, in fact, kosher certification is indeed a de facto tax, which may well be run along the lines of a protection racket. As regards stirring up animosity towards Jews, this is certainly not my intention as I abhor racial and religious bigotry in all its forms That is why I was appalled to discover "Israel's Jewish community increasingly supports the delegitimization, discrimination and even deportation of Arabs" and "78 percent oppose the inclusion of Arab political parties in the government (and) 74 percent of Jewish youths in Israel think that Arabs are ‘unclean.'" http://www.haaretz.com... http://www.haaretz.com... Thank you.