Reel Talk: What Makes Fish Kosher?

The number one most important skill if you want to be successful in cashes is curiosity. If you're curious, you will be matzly. Believe it or not, in the meat section, they don't have any tilapia. So, he's literally never come across it. It's never been an issue until today. Wow. I wasn't expecting that answer. Lucky you. Welcome to Keep it Kosher, the podcast where we go behind the scenes of the kosher world. I'm your host, Rabbi Ezra Sarna. Today we're sitting down in the U kitchen with Rabbi Kayen Goldberg. He is the OU's resident expert on everything that comes out of the water and he has traveled to fish factories on five different continents to ensure what ends up on your plate is 100% kosher. It's a fascinating conversation. Let's jump right in. >> Thank you very much for being here. When I was uh a year after high school, first year of best major, a friend of mine had a family connection to aid Rebba and I got invited to share a Shabbas meal with the Reb and his family and the closeid. >> Yeah. >> And the Reb took a bite of his fish at the beginning of the meal and then he passed the plate around for everyone to take. And when it came to me, I took the plate and I looked at it and then I passed it on. >> And the whole family got very excited and all the they called the plate back. They said, "No, no, you should take a bite of the revis." >> Yeah. >> I said, "I didn't know how to say it in Yiddish." I said, "I'm sorry. I'm allergic to fish." So, I really don't know so much about fish. I'm very excited for this opportunity to learn more. So, let me start with the I'm assuming the most common question that you get about buying a salmon. Can you really just walk into any store, kosher store, not kosher store, and buy a salmon? >> So, the answer is yes and no. Like everything else in the Torah, right? It's like somebody asked once, "Why do Jews always answer a question with a question?" To which I answered, "What's wrong with answering a question with a question?" Right? So, can you buy it? The answer is yes, but sometimes no. So, I'm going to try to make sense out of that. There's two issues that you have to deal with when you're buying kosher fish at a non-coosher establishment. The first is identifying the fish itself to make sure that the fish is a dog tar. And the second is dealing with the secondary issues of what happened with the preparation of that kosher fish in order to make it a finished product. So you'll forgive me for making them separate, but they really are separate. And I'll I'll go through them in order. So the first thing you have to figure out is if this thing actually is a salmon or not. And there's a couple of different things to think about. U policy is that if a person is able to recognize what a salmon looks like by looking at the flesh, he can even buy it without skin. That's aesh because we don't normally say that about fish without skin. If it doesn't have skin, we refer to that as kim. It's similar to the inards of fish which assert. We normally wouldn't allow that. But red salmon, the red salmon heather, as it's colloquially known, um would mean that anything that looks like a salmonided fish, something in the salmon mishbah could be purchased if you know what a salmon's supposed to look like. >> Nowadays, the food industry is so sophisticated and there's dyes and coloring for so many things. Is that not a concern that you can have a fish that looks like salmon, but it was just dyed? >> In theory, it's possible. So far, we haven't found that to be the case with raw salmon. Meaning that looking at the color of the fish would be significant and sufficient for a plain raw salmon. I've had people ask me, well, what about smoked salmon, which has myriad other issues added to it, but one of them to consider is that one of the ways of imparting an artificial dye to it would require adding salt to a water solution and soaking the fish in that. We do know of companies in the past who've done that. When they were making an artificial or fake smoked salmon, they would take another white fleshed fish, soak it in a salt water dye mixed with certain red color, and that would come out looking vaguely like a salmon, especially if you put it in a glass jar, and twist it slightly so that it's not laying flat so that you can't really see the flesh grain on it properly. Yeah, we caught a guy doing that in the UK who wanted to get uh coach certification, but it is possible, but not on a raw fish, so I'm not really worried about that. >> Okay. So, so raw salmon at a store because you can tell the color, you're allowed to buy it. >> We would allow skinless red salmon if you know what salmon is supposed to look like in terms of understanding that the fish itself is a dog tar. There are separate issues with the knife, the board, and the gloves. We could talk about that as well. >> Identifying the fish with salmon, you can walk into a store and buy it and you know that that fish is salmon. Now, I know there are people listening who are thinking, "Okay, you're talking about this generic store that's not in my community." In my community, I have a Trader Joe's. Can I walk into Trader Joe's? And and if I see salmon and I know what salmon looks like, I can buy it. >> Good. So, I mentioned earlier that there's two concerns that we're trying to deal with. So, the first was identifying the fish itself. And OU policy is willing to say if you know what a salmon is supposed to look like, you're not going to be fooled with a non-cooser fish that looks like a salmon. We believe and Rebellski had a longer recus on this. There is no non- kosher fish that looks like a salmon. There are other kosher fish which look like a salmon. So it is possible to get a substitution of a trout or an Arctic char, something like that which might look like salmon, but it's not going to be any non-coosher fish. So that's the fish issue in terms of the finished product when you're going into a retail establishment. So then we have to deal with the second issue which is did the fellow who cut the salmon have non-cooser residue on the knife, the board, the glove, any of the other surfaces that may have come in contact with the fish before it got to me. So if you be going to a place that cuts fish custom, right? If you go to a local fish store that's not a kosher fish store and that fellow, you know, cuts a salmon for you and cuts something else for the next guy, then you have to be worried that the knife, the board, the gloves, things like that could transfer residue from species to species. in a a supermarket where they have prepackaged vacuum-sealed fish, that's not the problem because that's packaged in an industrial environment where they're literally cutting thousands and thousands of fish at a time. And the is that we're not for uh any remnant of any schmutz that would have been left from the previous production. Even if the factory that was making that vacuum-sealed salmon yesterday was cutting up catfish, which is not likely for a bunch of reasons, but let's say even that happened. So there might be schmutz left on the knife, the board, the gloves, things like that. The first couple of pieces that he would cut the next morning might get that wiped off on them. Those pieces would be and is so we don't have to be for any of that. So, if it's vacuum sealed, clearly came from a place that, you know, puts these things on these um plastic trays that they're vacuum sealed. You can tell it was done in more industrial environment. The in between is when you get the overwrap. You get a a foam tray. Usually, you put the fish down and then this plastic overlay. It's harder to tell if that was done on site or if it was done at a major commissary. Then you have to do more investigations to figure out if you need to take it home and then clean it up. And we could talk about what the cleanup would look like. >> Yeah, let's talk about cleaning. So, you go to your local supermarket and they have um lightly packaged, not the vacuum packed, lightly packaged fish. You take it home, you take the salmon home. How do you make it cauter to serve? >> Okay. So, the first thing you're going to do when you take it home is you're going to turn on the water to not hot. I used to tell people that use the cold water. Then I'd have a guy negotiating with me, well, how cold does it have to be? Can I make it a little bit warm? I said, yeah, you can make it a little bit warm. So, how warm could I make it? So the answer is not yadis. Then people start arguing with me what time what number is not yadis. So I really just don't want to say that. So I just say not hot and then you do the math on what not hot means to you. Talk it over with your real rabbi. I don't care. But make your water not hot. Take a sharp non-s serrated knife which in kazal would be referred to as a saken chain puguma or just sakin which kind of tells you what kazal thought about serrated knives in general but I digress. You take your sharp non- serrated knife and you scrape all sides of the fish. So the first thing you did, you take the fish and then you rinse it off in your not hot water. Then you take your sharp non- serrated knife, scratch all the different sides of the fish. The top side, the the sides, the back side, the edges, whatever side may have touched knife, board, or gloves that handle non-coosher residue. You want to scratch that all off. And then you want to rinse everything with the same not hot water. And now you have cleaned off your fish. you've also cleaned off your knife. And when I often give this conver this at a presentation, people will start asking me afterwards, but you traced up your sink. As though I hadn't thought of that, right? Obviously, I don't care if the sink is tra. I only care if the fish is kosher cuz I'm the fish guy. I'm not the sink guy, you know? So, that was the point of using the not hot water. The same way the not hot water didn't transfer flavor into the fish, it also won't transfer Tom into the sink, the knife, or anything else. So that's why we tell you to use not hot water. Rinse it, scrape it, rinse it, and you're good to go. >> Cutting with a knife. If if they cut octopus and then the next slice they cut your salmon, washing it off and then scraping it with a with a knife is enough. >> Washing, scraping, and then rinsing the whole mess off is garb Pasque. It's in Tav if you don't believe me. And the uh you can look it up yourself. And that's that's what's brought down. >> And when you're scraping with your knife, do you have to see pieces of fish come off? >> Yeah. The idea is not a kipo. I've had people ask me this. So, I have to take a kadina teal. I have to take Kipo. I said, "No, this isn't a day test. This is just trying to be easy." I said, "Scrape it." So, you have to scrape it enough to be able to get a significant amount of fish protein off. You have to see something come off because we're afraid that a little bit of the mamushas from the schmutz got into that top layer and you're just scraping that off. So, as long as you're seeing at least some of the of the protein coming off while you're scraping it, you're not trying to make hlesh. This isn't a hamburger salmon day. The idea is that you're just trying to clean up the outside layer. That's that's all it is. It's cold. There is no magic that's happening over here. Everything doesn't become trave. Let's not freak out. And before you get nervous too much and call the OU and be happy to set you straight on that. And yeah, so it seems pretty straightforward. You buy the fish, you wash it off, you scrape it, wash it off again um using not hot water. It seems people keep asking this question. It seems like there's an ongoing conversation. What are people worried about or where's the confusion? >> Yeah, a lot of things that people may have heard one time in their life, they're not sure if they heard it right. Somebody, you know, makes a suggestion that maybe that's not exactly right. Somebody's rabbi said something different. And in general, I mean, this is a good thing when people are nervous about buying non-coosher or buying in a non-coosher environment and they're just trying to protect themselves and make sure that they're not ruining anything. Um, that's not a bad thing. I mean, we support that. I found in general when I was going out of town and speaking to people about kosher fish, the out of town people have a much better picture of how to check a fish to know if it's kosher, meaning a non- salmoned species. They know much more about how to handle themselves in an environment that has non-coosher products around it. Uh they know about washing and scraping, and they know how to about bringing their own knife and board to a fish seller in order to make sure everything is fine. People in town have very little knowledge of these things. Institutionally we don't need to have it because we have kosher stores in every neighborhood all kosher stores and to the extent that mo many kosher consumers in town have less yadia satyra because it's just not no laisa it's a nice sugia it's a nice thing in theory so you know this is the difference between being a cashless professional and being a regular dad is that when my kids were little and we went on vacations I wanted to go to out of the way places and teach them stuff as part of the vacation. So, we went to a community in the south that does not have a major Jewish community. They had a shul, but not a community. And I took my kids to the local Kroger supermarket and I told them that we don't have dinner. I specifically did not bring food and there is no kosher restaurant here. So, we're going to find food in the local supermarket and there is a kosher meat section and we are not going to shop there because we have to see what it's like to live out of town and what are you going to do and we're makro. So, we have to be aware of that and they have to look through. And I remember my kids looking around and trying to find stuff and saying like almost all the beans are not kosher. There's only one flavor. I said, "Well, I guess that's the one we're going to have." And they were looking through the cookies. Said, "The cookies are all dairy." I said, "Yeah, but if we're not going to be Israel, we're going to have to find a part of one." And they went through and guess what? We managed perfectly fine. And instead of taking them to a restaurant in a major Jewish community, they have a memory and a picture of what it's like to live out of town. They're not afraid of looking for things without ashka and learning how to handle them. So I feel like it's an important thing for people to be aware of not just as a suga to be aware of but lameisa to put yourself in an environment where you have to think like a mash that you don't always have food on you when we're traveling around the world and we have to figure out how to manage in our local environment and part of that means buying fish at a non-cooser place and knowing how to avoid problems in order to keep kosher wherever we are. sound like a good dad besides being good uh OU cautious representative. Let me take that opportunity to ask you about yourself a little bit. How did you get to the OU? I am a product of the U. I am U certified through and through. I was 17 years old when I first got in with NTSY. I was a public school student a couple blocks up at Stson High School on the Westside Highway in Chamber Street right at the corner. And uh when I was 17, I was on the Sten High School football team, the Peg Legs. And after school, we had >> you were a lineager. >> I was not. I was a uh sit on the bench kind of guy, but uh I went to practice dutifully and wanted to be part of the camaraderie of the whole thing. Not very athletic um but all heart. Anyhow, so we had weightlifting in the offseason. So it was uh January in uh 94 and coming out of weightlifting, you had to cross the Westside Highway to get back to the train. At that point, there's a pedestrian bridge over the Westside Highway, but it's closed, or it was at the time closed late at night. I've heard that changed after the following incident. Um, and we had to cross the Westside Highway, which has lights, but they're not great. And, um, I was running after a colleague who was leaving practice, and he managed to make it across, and I did not. And uh I was stopped by a Nissan um that uh left me flat on my face and um I got got sent to the hospital and they checked me out. A couple of broken bones, nothing terrible. Um but it did sideline me from going back to football practice and I was, you know, kind of sad about that. So one of my friends in home room suggested going to the Jewish club because it's a place to hang out. there are from people there and they have snacks which part of the magic of NCSY is that we provide friends and snacks. They kind of should advertise that come for the friends day for the snacks. >> I think they do. >> Maybe they do. Um either way it it worked and I came and uh the speaker over there was was a very engaging rabbi from the Nissan Girtz. hope he's listening to his podcast and um he he spoke and he explained a lot about Yiddish kite and um I found it very attractive and I went uh with them on a shabatone and uh we went to kosher bite in uh Baltimore and uh that was my first time consciously eating kosher food and I was like this tastes great and my advisor was like yeah and I always thought kosher food was second grade this is perfectly fine I was like all right I'm what that means. I'm in. I'm in. Tell me what I have to do. And from there, from age 17, I've been uh mo with the uh with the OU. And I went to Yeshiva. I went to Kyle and then I right out of Kyle, I got a job here. Wow. I wasn't expecting that answer. Lucky you. But you're so enthusiastic. Do you ever consider being a rebby in a day school? Was that on your radar or you just had that taste from kosher bite and you It's >> funny you'd ask that. I actually kind of did always want to teach in the back of my mind. My my mother Alan was a teacher. Now that I'm here at the OU, I was offered an opportunity to uh to teach once a week at DDU. The OU's Yakad division has a school for boys and upper division in borrow park which I am the proud uh teacher of Halaka lab which is a class that I give mostly about kashras but not exclusively where we just try to take halaka concepts make them very very practical uh reasonable applicable answer everybody's questions clarify things that are not clear and bring something that's that's very lameisa to the boy's attention so yeah I mean I I get to vent my desire for teaching both in presentations about cashas on behalf of the OU and then once a week to to my boys in Idu. So yeah. >> So the OU has an educational wing and you go out to communities to educate communities about fish and other things cautious. >> Yeah. The uh the there's an escoou program which we do here in the office training mashim. And we also go out to communities. We recently went to uh to Florida. We were in Colorado. Um, we've gone to in Minneapolis and and a couple months ago, um, we've gone to a lot of different places and sometimes the local mashkim will ask me to make a presentation when I'm in their community while I'm there. So, I've done presentations to the massa in Little Rock, Arkansas when I was there. I did in Cincinnati, Ohio when I visited a mash there. I've done in Dallas. I've done in other places. But yeah, I mean, I'm happy to talk about kosher fish stuff especially. And um yeah, if there's an opportunity to speak and somebody wants to hear what I have to say, happy to say it. >> Wow, that's fascinating. I didn't know that you were so involved in outreach and education. Where is the or what is the main hala about fish in terms of buying fish and eating fish? Okay. So, when I'm giving my presentation, one of the things especially when I'm speaking to kids, I like to ask how many people have a short attention span. And a lot of kids will raise their hand and then I'll ask how many people already forgot the question and then a bunch of other kids will raise their hand. Said, "Okay, for those of you with the super short attention span, here's the takeaway that I really need you to come home with." The definition of a kosher fish practically when you're trying to figure out if the fish is kosher, you're looking to check if the fish has scales that can be removed from the fish without ripping the skin. That's the Ramban's definition of a casque brings it down. That's the icker that we're focused on. The garland says call cases yes snapier. Anything which has cases a scale as I defined it will have snappier. So we don't have to check for snapper practically but we do need to make sure >> fins. You don't have to check for fins. >> We don't need to check for the fins. What we do need to check is to make sure that it has scales that can be removed without ripping the skin. And there are conditions for that. And there things you have to think about. And what if the scales fall out? What if the scales were scraped off? and I didn't see them before they were scraped off and other ways that we can manage all of those things. But that is the most important thing and that when you're buying fish other than salmonided fish, you have to make sure that it's a dog tar before they take the skin off. You cannot rely on buying fish based on the name alone. There's no list that's going to help you. There's no guy behind the counter that assures you that all the Jews buy this or that fish. None of that's going to work. You have to make sure you're dealing with a dog to before anything else can happen. So >> in other words, that's just practical advice or there's a derbun that you cannot buy fish without without skin. >> Yeah. So if the fish has no skin, that puts it back into the category of kerve dugen which I'll talk about is the guts of the fish until I'm going to guess somewhere around the 1970s or 80s when refrigeration technology got improved and we started sending fish fillets meaning fish skinless fish fillets um outside of regional areas. It wasn't really a thing except for fish guts which were preserved and treated and other things that would have been the only fish product you would have seen where you couldn't identify it by looking at the skin. So Kazal definitely forbade anything that was not identifiable and we understand that to mean that includes fish by looking at the meat and not seeing the skin. It would still be in that category. and how much skin you have to see. We could discuss that as well, but the bottom line is you have to be able to recognize a fish based on the skin other than the exceptions to the rule like we mentioned earlier about salmon. >> I see. So, if you go into your local store and you see something labeled tilapia and it looks like tilapia that you always eat, you're not allowed to buy it. Not allowed to eat it. >> Yeah, definitely don't buy something called tilapia. It's funny you mentioned that. I had a story many years ago was still working in the office. Um, I had a call from a Mashk in the middle of nowhere, meaning not Brooklyn. And he called me up and wanted to know what the story was with tilapia, whether it was a kosher fish or not. And before answering him, I asked him, "Why do you want to know?" And he told me that he's the mashkie at the fish counter at so- and so supermarket, and they got a delivery of tilapia, and he wants to know if he can include it in the kosher fish section or not. And I said to him, "Why are you calling me? Why don't you just check the skin and see if you can pull the scales off? And he said, "Rabbi, if I could have pulled the scales off the skin, what do I need to talk to you for? This stuff came with no skin on it. So, how am I supposed to know?" Great question, right? Told him it's user. He said, "Why? Tilapia is tra. I thought it was good." He said, "Some tilapia is kosher, but skinless tilapia is user." And I tried to explain to him about curved dog and things like that. And I asked him, "Rabbi, you mentioned that you're the mashk at a certain supermarket chain. How long have you been mashk there?" said, "Oh, about 30 years." 30 years. I'm curious, why today did you think to call the U to ask about tilapia? Good question. Right. By the way, very important rule in cash. The number one most important skill if you want to be successful in cash is curiosity. If you're curious, you will be mat on any level as a consumer, as a mashia, as a supervisor, anything. But you have to be curious. If you're the kind of person that just takes an answer and moves on from there, you're not going to get very far. Maybe that's in other industries as well. I don't know. My whole life I worked in cashes. I can't say. But I can tell you in every situation I've been in being curious got me the most information over any other method I've ever tried. But I digress. So I asked the fellow 30 years you're mash today you thought to call. Why is that? Said ah because I'm the mash in the in the meat section and today the fish section guy didn't show up. So the manager said you're the rabbi. We have enough kosher meat cut already. go to the fish section and man the fish section and I've never manned the fish section before. So today was the first time I had to deal with that. So to me this is an important rule that people need to realize. People always want to know is there a mash? Is there a mash to just because you have somebody that looks the part doesn't mean he knows what he needs to know. And just because he's been a mash for 30 years doesn't mean he knows anything about fish because well in 30 years he must have come across it. Believe it or not in the meat section they don't have any tilapia. So he's literally never come across it. It's never been an issue until today. >> So that's why we ask questions. We want to understand. We try not to just answer consumers with what they ask, but try to dig down to exactly what it is they really need to know and make sure they get the right information because I could have just been flippant and said Clappy is kosher. Click pick up the next call. But somehow the way the question was asked, I felt like there was more to it than that. and brahashem I kept asking until I got to the point where I realized that this fellow was about to serve non-coosher fish and call it kosher. >> So I know that in certain areas of kashis we rely on strict government rules. I know that in the world of chnis labeling on clothing means very little. Are there government rules that we can rely upon when it comes to fish? So it's a funny thing because in many areas we absolutely do rely on the government. We have standards of identity. We have systems that guarantee uh proper inspections of factories for levels of cleanliness and care and things like that. When it comes to species substitution, which is the nice way of saying I'm selling you fish A and it's really fish B, the government themselves warns people, I think the FDA put an article out in 1992 and I believe it may even still be on their website. We definitely have a copy on our database of it that the FDA um has an article something is something fishy going on and the point of the article was that species substitution is a rampant issue. Let's remind ourselves they're called fishmongers for a reason. And fish mongers will typically sell whatever they can at the best price that they can by doing whatever they can get away with and not get punished. And we find regularly that skinless fish is substituted in a way that benefits the seller by mislabeling it as another species. So that would potentially be a kosher concern if it wasn't that we subverted all of that subversion by requiring skin when there's skin intact. We have no concern that this might be another non-coosher fish which just looks like a kosher fish. And because of that, we are taken care of in that concern. >> That's fascinating. So let me ask you this. You said it's as simple as taking a fish, checking if you can remove the scales from the skin. Are there any fish that are kosher that a consumer might have that will not have scales on them? >> Yeah, there are definitely fish that drop their scales when they come out of the water. There are some that do it in more dramatic ways and some that do it in less dramatic ways. For example, if you go fishing for sailfish, which I've never done, but apparently it's a thing. Apparently, the scales fly off in very dramatic manner. I've seen pictures of it and I've heard descriptions, but when sailfish are caught and they're being pulled out of the water, part of the fight includes the fish shedding its scales in every direction, which is probably pretty exciting. Um, in the more practical way, you're not likely to find sail fish in a supermarket, but you are more likely to find something like a mackerel or a herring. And those are uh also fish that would potentially drop their scales when they come out of the water. And that creates a problem because the consumer who'd want to buy a herring or a mackerel would have to find a scale on it or recognize the fish using the iron. I have a funny story. The first time that I went out to a herring facility was in Atlantic, Canada in New Brunswick where they fish off the Bay of Fundi, major supply for herring and sardines. And I was visiting this sardine canery. And being a rabbi doing a review, I went with the the locom and I pulled a fish off the line to check it for some as we do. And I pulled the herring off the line and started scratching it and I found no scales on it. So, of course, I got very concerned because generations of my people have been eating herring, assuming that it was kosher, and it's looking kind of sus to me, as the young would say. Um, so I asked the lady in charge, "What's up with that?" And she told me that herring are one of those fish that drop their scales when they come out of the water. So, I had asked her, "Wow, that that must make a real mess at the bottom of a fishing vessel." Which afterwards, I kind of thought that's a dumb question because a fishing vessel is always a mess, but all right, never mind. But it did lead to a great answer. So, I asked her, "What do you do with all those herring scales? Do you sell them to animal feed or things like that?" And she said, "No, they have a much more valuable use for herring scales." Herring scales are sold to the cosmetics industry. One of the uses for herring scales in the cosmetics industry is that you could grind up the herring scales and you could mix it with other forms of makeup in order to make it more glisteny so that I guess when you're applying the makeup it shines in a certain way. I'm not sure exactly, but I know it's a thing and I've asked other people if they noticed it. Yeah, of course. >> So, you mentioned you went to New Brunswick. Have you been to other exciting places as part of your uh role as fish expert? The great thing about dealing with fish is that fish tend to be in some of the most p picturesque places on planet earth. The U has sent me to five continents so far. I have received offers to go to the other two, but I declined Australia and Antarctica both for logistics reasons, but I have been to uh Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador. Um um I've been to Trinidad. I've been to Canada, of course. I've been to Iceland. I've been to um I've been all all around Northern Europe to go see salmon and cod factories over there. I've been to Africa, to Uganda twice, to Sagal twice, to Ghana twice. I've been to the Philippines. I've been to Thailand. And yeah, I the U sent me around to some really exciting, beautiful places to go see. >> And these factories you're going to, they're not just producing fish, right? I mean there's a lot of fish by byproducts. Right. >> Right. So most of those factories are not just making plain raw fish. They're doing what we call value added product. They took the fish out of the water. They cut it. They processed it in some way to get more money out of it. Right. The plain raw fish is just a commodity. The real money is when you cut it and prepare it. Cut it and smoke it. Cut it and can it. Cut it and do something else to it. Yeah. So that's mostly what we're going to see. If it would be a plain skin on fish sent to the United States with the skin still on, there's not much for us to see. But yeah, most of the products are smoked or canned or otherwise value added in that way. And the products that are made from fish is the cash supervision a lot more complicated because they could they could theoretically have other kinds of fish fall into their large graders that pump out fish oil. >> Yeah. So depending on what kind of product we're dealing with, we have to consider the various cautious issues that would come up. One of the things that we have to deal with right at the start is by catch. By catch is what we refer to any non-target species. So if you're fishing for tuna, you very likely may have sharks that are predators trying to eat the tuna that get caught in the process of catching a tuna. The tuna industry has gotten very good at designing nets in a way that gets the shark out long before it gets onto the vessel for various monetary reasons that have nothing to do with cautious, but things like that do come up. Um, we definitely have seen small sharks in herring facilities. They uh the fishing method is different. They persine them, so it's a lot easier to get non-target by catch. And the first thing we need to do is evaluate how the plant for monetary reasons, for business reasons, removes the by catch. So in the case of a herring factory that might be handling herring that are mixed with dogf fin shark, they're they're predators. They're going to be much larger than the target species. So they have manual excluders, they're called. It's pretty cool to watch. They basically dump the whole catch over rollers to size them. And the sharks are going to be much bigger than even the the largest sizer. So, it's just going to roll right off and hit the floor. And I actually watched it happening once when I walked through the area. It was it was pretty cool to watch. And um we're always going to look at what non-cosher could get into the factory and what systems are there to prevent that from happening. So, if the factory has their own system for managing that, then we can work with their system and then we monitor their system. That's part of what Mashia is doing when he goes to visit. We have had instances of factories that don't care about the non-coser getting mixed in. So for example, you mentioned fish oil. The lot of sources of fish oil. Some of the most popular sources of fish oil are small fish that are primarily being fished for fish meal. Fish meal is they, you know, they take some small pelagic fish, grind it up. Well, cook it first, grind it up, press the oil off of it, and the majority of what they get is ground up fish protein, which they can now use in animal feed, uh, farmed fish feed, things like that. that's the target of what they're going for and they don't care what falls into the cooker. So when we realized that and we had manufacturers trying to make sardine oil or anchovi oil off of that product, we had we had to require mash tidi that they removed 100% of by catch before it got to a cooker. And yeah, I was looking today through some reports from one of my field representatives who did that run in Peru and sent me pictures of all the times that they found an octopus or shrimps. So, a divebombing bird that managed to find its way into the cooker, all that has to be removed. And since the factory wasn't going to do it for business reasons, we had to require mashidi to watch while that was done. So, >> and is that what it means that tuna is dolphin free? >> No. the uh the controversy about u tuna often devolves into people quoting untrue facts. So I don't claim to be such a bahala to be able to argue with the greats that came before me on any of these issues. But what does bother me is when people misstate the facts because the facts are available for any of us to know. And I've made it my business to make myself aware of the facts wherever I go. I've been to tuna canaries on now four continents. I didn't see one any in Africa, but I have seen in all the others. And there is no dolphin that gets anywhere near a canery for many reasons. The term dolphin safe is a government regulated term that particularly was referring to one of the primary ways of fishing for dolphins, which used to be to set your sonar on dolphins and then catch the tuna that were underneath them. figuring often when you find a dolphin, you find a buffet of tuna underneath the dolphins. So the tuna fishers would look for dolphins that are bigger and easier to find, put the nets underneath the dolphins, take the whole thing up in the process. They wouldn't be interested in keeping the dolphin, but a lot of times a dolphin would get caught in the net, get injured, get killed, things like that. So they created the dolphin safe regulations which interestingly enough consists of a government mashidi not necessarily Jewish not there for kosher reasons who is confirming that there's no dolphin that was injured or killed in the process of bringing in that particular batch of fish and if a dolphin was injured or killed in the process of doing it they have to keep it in a segregated hold so it effectively makes all that fish you know not kosher relative to dolphin and they have to be treated in a different Hey, they can't sell it as gradea a tuna. There's all kinds of rules about there's really nothing wrong with the tuna so much as like a a can on the fissurers for not being more careful to not injure a dolphin along the way. But no, there was never a dolphin that got anywhere near a tuna canery for a myriad of reasons. >> And tuna plants where they're where they're taking tuna fish and putting them in cans. Is that one of those factories that there's very little concern because the factory has a lot of internal processes that weed out nik kosher fish or is that one of these uh in the category of one that needs high level supervision. So in all of the years that OU has certified tuna caneries, we have yet to find an instance either our mashk or other mashkim who are doing hashkaas at that factory ever found a factory attempting to put a non-cooser fish into a can of tuna. Not only that, they are super super mbid for business reasons not to allow different species of fish to be used in the wrong can of tuna. >> And the companies are very very careful. >> Correct. So, as a consumer, you might have come across two types of fish, light and white, which most people think is a quality issue or just a color issue, and it's not. In American law, only albaore tuna can be referred to as white tuna. Every other species that's commercially canned can be referred to as light tuna. The meat tends to be a darker color often. Um, it's usually saltier, the texture is a little bit different, and it's considered less desirable. So they have different areas, the tuna companies do of how they market and where. And apparently light tuna is mostly a Midwest thing and Albaort tuna is mostly a coastal thing. Even though when I was a kid, we always ate light tuna. And I personally find white tuna to smell too fishy and it turns me off. So we always had light tuna mixed with mayonnaise. And the idea of a tuna salad that's not light tuna mixed with mayonnaise still causes me to feel a little bit unsettled. It doesn't crumble the right way. It smells weird. I don't know. I'm not much of a fish eater, which many people find surprising. I had a guy say to me the other day, "But you're the fish rabbi. Why don't you eat fish?" So, you know, it's a funny thing. You're an accountant. Do you eat tax returns? So, I want to go to some common questions that people ask. A common question uh that I get, I'm sure others get, I'm sure you get the most, is grilling fish. You have a home grill that you normally grill hot dogs, hamburger, steaks, and now you want to grill your fish. Can you grill the fish directly on the same grates? Can you put a plank on top and grill your fish? What the hell about that? So, personally, if I have questions to ask my fish, I would ask them politely. I wouldn't grill the fish. That's my personal attitude towards questioning fish. But if a person wanted to cook his fish on a grill, um I would imagine he would have a concern that his grill is normally used for meat. And we don't at the OU allow fish and meat to be cooked on the same grill. We're concerned about the flavor of the fish and the meat getting mixed with each other. We have a concern about that and I understand others are not concerned about that. But that's the normative answer that we would give if somebody would call the U. >> I mean the Kumar says that you cannot eat meat and fish together. Right. >> Right. You can't eat meat and fish together. There's a question I believe it's of Rome that talks about this that maybe it's nishanava because we see that practically people eat meat and fish meaning I guess non-Jewish people eating fish and meat together and not getting sick. So the question is if you tell me it's a danger to the human body then >> Mars says the concern is danger >> right it's it's danger it's it seems to be specifically danger of saras that's my understanding of it but it seems that it's also referred to at least in some places as an actual sana that might cause people to feel physically sick in some way and we don't see that happening so it would seem to it would seem to imply that things have changed and the U uses that idea as a sniff to be mitarif in a case or something like worsture sauce, which is a sauce that can, not always, but it can include anchovies. The standard of identity of worer sauce. Yes, I did look it up. The code of federal regulations, that's where you find everything. Um, does allow but not require anchovies to be added in worer sauce, which is why the fancy ones will have it and the cheap ones will not have it. And if they put so much anchovian that it's not bubashishim, we require them to write oh you fish on it. And if there's less than shishim, we allow them to rely on that bit. So long as they write on the label that there are anchovies in there so that if somebody isn't comfortable with that, they'll see that there is fish listed in the ingredients and they'll know not to use it on steak or things like that. But in terms of the grill, we would tell you to use using a plank is fine. That's taking the fish off of the grill. You might now want to be worried about the fish juice accumulating on the plank. It's kind of flat and it could leak. So, you're potentially going to have to deal with that fish plank not being big enough to hold your fish and its juice coming off of it at the same time. So, that's a concern that person might have to think about or just using a disposable grill or something to keep the fish separate from the meat. But, yeah, we wouldn't recommend cooking them together for sure. >> Okay. Okay. Another common question is you have your fish on Friday night, you have your kilta fish or your salmon, and now you're ready for the chicken soup. Do you need to do anything between the fish and the chicken soup? >> Yeah. So, even if you're not from the kind of communities that take a shot of alcohol between your fish and your chicken, you definitely do need to do means washing your mouth out with a liquid and with a salad. And the salad can't be plain vegetables. So, you want something that's kind of mealy. So, a piece of kala is perfect for that. Um, some kind of crack or something of that nature. So, you want a liquid and a solid both to clean out your pallet before you uh transfer over between fish and meat. And that would go both ways. So, if you wanted to eat fish and then meat and then go back to fish, just do it again. So, anytime you're going between fish and meat, you want to do a you want to wash out your mouth with a liquid and with a solid. Some people are makid on apparently um washing your hands in between courses. I'm not aware of anyone requiring that la, but in some communities that's the minig and obviously we welcome that as well if that's what your min is. >> And is there any reason not to have fish and meat on the table at the same time? Are you allowed to have them on the table at the same time? >> So fish and meat on the table at the same time if they're being served is a nightmare. you're looking for trouble and you'll commonly see that happen at a kdish or something where they put herring on the table and then they put chand right next to it on the table and the chant spills on the herring or somebody drips herring into the chand or somebody forgets and uses the same fork that he was using for his geila fish or for his herring on the chand or vice versa. So in my mind it's a bad idea. Um I've been to sh where they make a point of serving separately. Um, I highly recommend that. And u caterers, we don't allow them to put meat and fish together at the same time because we're very afraid of mistakes like that happening. And yeah, I mean it's a good idea to make it clear at least in some way. Put up signs, something to make it clear to people what is fish and what is meat and you should not be eating them together. Not a good idea. >> And what about the cup that you're drinking from? You you ate fish and then you drink in order to do. You can continue using that cup for the meal. >> I hear the question. I've never heard it asked before and my understanding was that we don't require separate cups. So, I'm guessing that whatever uh small amount of fish that might have been left on the cup might might not be a problem. Um I do remember somebody commenting once watching me drink water while I was eating the fish. That how is I drinking water while I'm drinking the fish. That that's also sana. Apparently, in some communities, you're not allowed to drink while you're eating the fish. And then I guess that would obiate the problem. But um yeah, I've I've never heard of it being an issue, but >> they were probably wondering why you were drinking while you were talking. >> I let my fish do all the talking for me. >> Um and I I understand there's a difference between Ashkanazim and Spartan when it comes to um eating fish with dairy. >> There's a lot of differences between Ashkanazim and Spardim. Um fish and dairy is definitely one of them. Uh I have a son-in-law who's see who also won't eat fish and dairy together because that's apparently the mining in Stalin in other places. So but uh yeah I mean the bas definitely seems to discuss the idea of fish and milk being a sakana the same way that you and I would think that meat and fish are a saka. So um >> would require between fish and and milk. >> Yeah. But that's the least of their problems. They also can't understand why Askinazam live for bagels and lots of because I've seen my son-in-law do mayonnaise instead of cream cheese and he doesn't really understand what he's missing out on in life. >> Okay, let's move on to the next >> being this good with this one. >> Listen, we're not the only joy we have in life is bagels and locks of the Thank God that wasn't taken away from us. You have a woman who is uh she bought fresh fish at the local fish counter and she cuts it open and she finds a worm. Did that mean that the fish is tra? What do you do in such a situation? Okay, so there are different kinds of worms. Whenever we're dealing with worms and fish, we have to figure out where the worm came from. But so long as it started in the fish and remained in the fish, you would be allowed to eat it as long as it remains inside of the fish, which by the way, if you're eating Alaskan salmon, you're eating anosacus. I'm just telling you, no matter what anyone ever told you about you eating farm salmon, you you're you're clean. But if you're eating wild salmon, canned salmon is almost always wild. It'll say Alaskan salmon or British Columbombian salmon. It's definitely wild salmon. And if it's wild, it has worms in it. And used to tell me that people who want to be strict about worms and fish must eat only farm fish because he thought it was obvious and absolute that every wild fish must have some sort of parasites in it. And who knows if those parasites are near lay naim in a way that the guys who are being strict about worms and fish would think are a problem or not. And many people have that opinion. Others say we checked. We didn't find. We're not to be. Okay. Different ways of looking at it. But I think it's fair to to point out, yeah, there can be worms in your fish. Even if it's all you certified, and we don't recommend you eat the worm. If it's exited the fish, if it's sitting on a plate on its own, don't eat it. Definitely don't eat it. A common question that I get is what is uh baby salmon? >> What is baby salmon? So some people think that baby salmon is just an immature salmon and I love doing this during a presentation. I have a fellow who prepares fish specifically for me for presentations. And my order includes one up, one down, which means I want to see flesh side on one fillet and skin side on the other next to each other in the same overlaid foil of a foam package. So that way I can show somebody this is a baby salmon on both sides and this is a regular salmon on both sides and I show them the comparison that the flesh doesn't look quite the same and the skin looks very different. So you can see it's not a smaller version of the same species. A baby salmon is just a marketing term for a steel head which is either a trout salmon or miniffs. It's mlikus fisherman I guess of how to taxenomomenologically determine whatever to call it but steel head is it's its own thing. It is not it's in the salmon mishbaka. It's a salmoned fish but it's not salmon. So no your baby salmon isn't a salmon. The term baby salmon by the way is a very from thing. You don't find it very much outside of from circles. Most other places just refer to it straight up as steel head. And it was a great way of marketing steel head to people that weren't familiar with it. Originally, it was cheaper than salmon and people were willing to try it for that reason. And when they found out that the texture was great, the taste is great, and it's slightly different from salmon. In most places, it's now more expensive than the OG. Go figure. >> Okay. I'm sorry to veer from the halas of fish, but we're going to uh go to probably the second most common fish question, which is what broth do you make on sushi? >> So, I make misus on sushi for a very simple reason. I don't want to eat the fish and I don't even want to taste the fish. The fish is just kind of there so that I'm not just eating rice and people are staring at me. So by me it's obvious and push it that you make monus on it cuz I just want the the rice with the soy sauce and whatever other sauces you got over there because I'm a big sauce guy. I've heard people suggest that maybe you should split it and make two braas on it. I also was told that also thought that that sushi should be mazona. So, I'm pretty confident in what I do and I recommend that everybody make misinus on their sushi. Brain of flushes at the end. >> So, in anticipation of this episode, we reached out to our listeners to see if they had any questions. So, now we're going to hear some questions from some of our listeners. >> Can we play the uh first question? >> So, I normally eat fish before I have meat, but can I have fish after I have meat? And am I able to go back and forth? Say I'm in a sushi restaurant and I have a fish appetizer and a meaty entree. Can I then have a sushi roll after that? Okay, that's a great question. I'll tell you why. It's a great question because it literally just happened to me this week. We had a event where we were eating fish and there was meat being served and uh I had to switch between them and then I decided I would go back and try some of the sushi which I wasn't really interested in before but at the end of the meal I decided to give it a a shot and I I exactly had to go through this. So it's one of the the gdarm of a good question is it literally happened to me. So it literally happened to me. So let me tell you the process of going between fish and meat is pretty simple. You need to do kinuk and you need to wash your mouth out with a liquid and with a salad. It's got to be something not like a vegetable, something a little bit mealy, something like a cracker, bread, something like that. You want to put those both through your mouth. That's the same going from fish to meat or from meat to fish. There's no waiting period. People get confused about that because they know about meat after dairy. So, there's no problem. You can go straight from one to the other. Just wash out your mouth with a liquid and a solid and then you can switch back and forth in any direction as many times as you want. >> Okay, let's do one more question. Here we go. >> Hey, I have a question about uh cooking fish and meat in the same oven first. Uh can fish and meat be cooked in the same oven at the same time? And does it matter if one is above the other? And uh are there any concerns about uh dripping or shared steam affecting the cautious of the meat or the fish? It's a great question. Um, we do find in sharak a discussion about cooking meat and dairy in an oven at the same time. There's nothing that I remember seeing about meat and fish at the same time. Although I'm sure it's discussed, I just don't remember where it would be. But the concern would be the same idea that we would have about eating meat and fish together at the same time. And you'd want to avoid the raika and the za coming off one to the other. And the way you would do that is by covering one or both of them and preventing that from mingling the oven. Maybe you want to cover both. Um, and in terms of dripping, yeah, you definitely want to prevent dripping from one to the other. So, either cook them offset, one to the left, one to the right kind of thing. Or maybe put one or both on a cookie sheet so that way they can't drip from one into the other. That was an incredibly illuminating conversation. A huge thank you to Rabbi Goldberg for taking the time to join us today. Thank you for tuning in to Keeping it Kosher. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe. We'll see you next time as we continue to uncover the stories behind the symbol.