If you keep kosher, meaning that you follow the list of Judaism’s strict dietary restrictions, where your food comes from is a big deal. That’s why it’s handy to have foods that are certified kosher, so you can ensure that the things you’re picking up in the grocery store have been regulated by a rabbi. And why the case of one company forging kosher certificates fo their food is especially disconcerting. Creation Foods, a Canadian food distribution company, is in trouble with the law after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency found that it was selling fake kosher cheese to at least two Jewish Summer Camps in 2015.
According to The Star, Creation forged kosher certificates on the cheese to make it seem like it adhered to kosher laws, even though it did not meet the requirements of Jewish dietary laws. The company photoshopped the product code serial numbers on the certificates. The change was one that employees of the Kasruth Council, a non-profit organization that provides kosher certification, caught.
Kosher cheese is more expensive than regular, non-kosher cheese, because it requires a rabbi to add the coagulation enzyme at the initial stage of cheese-making. But the savings that Creation Foods got from scamming summer camps definitely backfired once the Canadian justice system caught wind of Creation’s fraud. The company has been fined $25,000 for passing off non-kosher cheese as kosher, the first time in Canadian history that a case of kosher food fraud has been brought in front of a provincial court. Cheese crime: It just doesn’t pay.