English Info

Attention!

 

 

It has been about a year since many rabbis and Kashrut organizations warned that strawberries are infested in a manner that makes it virtually impossible to clean them.

 

They told us that thrips- a new bug- hide under the seeds. The thrips are yellow and flexible and can hide under the seeds and even survive the most stringent cleaning and emerge intact.

 

An untrained eye cannot discern this bug, though it is not microscopic in size. Many prominent people have had a hard time accepting that this is a problem, because of the visibility issue.

 

The ingestion of insects is a severe Torah prohibition - four to six prohibitions! It is worse than eating a kazayit of nevela u'trefa and therefore with the help of Hashem we are able to share this video with the public and to demonstrate that even after thorough cleaning, live thrips were found on strawberries.

 

The images you will be seeing are not professional, they are homemade and they will prove without a doubt that the beautiful red fruit joins the raspberry and blackberry in the category of fruit that cannot be cleaned because of high infestation.

 

We went on red alert because of a discovery made on Shabbat Parashat Beha’alotecha, 06/14/08, at a prestigious local shul catering hall. As per special request by the client, strawberries were to be served at this seuda. The strawberries went through a thorough cleaning by a knowledgeable mashgiach as you will view in the video. By chance (Hashgacha of course) I picked up a strawberry Shabbat morning and walked to the window to take a look. To my great shock and consternation I saw a small thrips walking on the strawberry. I could not believe my eyes and called the mashgiach to see if I was dreaming. He too was shocked to discover that there were live thrips visible on the strawberries. We called over several waiters and our fears were confirmed – almost all the strawberries were infested with thrips though they had been carefully cleaned and checked before Shabbat.

 

On the week of June 14, 2008 through June 22, 2008 we checked hundreds of strawberries. The results will be shown in the following video.

 

 

 

Judge for yourself!