Kosher : : Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food / / Timothy D. Lytton.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter E-BOOK GESAMTPAKET / COMPLETE PACKAGE 2013
• VerfasserIn: Lytton, Timothy D.,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2013]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (240 p.) :; 12 graphs, 2 tables

Generating over $12 billion in annual sales, kosher food is big business. It is also an unheralded story of successful private-sector regulation in an era of growing public concern over the government's ability to ensure food safety. Kosher uncovers how independent certification agencies rescued American kosher supervision from fraud and corruption and turned it into a model of nongovernmental administration. Currently, a network of over three hundred private certifiers ensures the kosher status of food for over twelve million Americans, of whom only eight percent are religious Jews. But the system was not always so reliable. At the turn of the twentieth century, kosher meat production in the United States was notorious for scandals involving price-fixing, racketeering, and even murder. Reform finally came with the rise of independent kosher certification agencies which established uniform industry standards, rigorous professional training, and institutional checks and balances to prevent mistakes and misconduct. In overcoming many of the problems of insufficient resources and weak enforcement that hamper the government, private kosher certification holds important lessons for improving food regulation, Timothy Lytton argues. He views the popularity of kosher food as a response to a more general cultural anxiety about industrialization of the food supply. Like organic and locavore enthusiasts, a growing number of consumers see in rabbinic supervision a way to personalize today's vastly complex, globalized system of food production.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- CHAPTER ONE. Rivalry and Racketeering -- CHAPTER TWO. From Canned Soup to Packaged Nuts -- CHAPTER THREE. Sour Grapes and Self- Regulation -- CHAPTER FOUR. Taking Stock -- Conclusion -- Appendix A: Controversy over OU Dominance of Kosher Meat Certification -- APPENDIX B. An Overview of Antitrust Concerns -- APPENDIX C. The Iowa Slaughter house Scandal and the Movement for Ethical Kashrus -- APPENDIX D. Self- Reported Data from Big Five Kosher Certification Agencies -- APPENDIX E. Supermarket Survey Data -- Glossary of Terms and Names -- List of Acronyms -- Acknowledgments -- Index