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Years ago, IIRC, I heard the following from a respectable source:

  1. By Israeli law, if the רבנות of one city certifies a food as kosher, then the רבנות of any other city must allow that food as an ingredient in factories and restaurants it certifies (not "למהדרין"). Briefly, every רבנות must accept the certification of every other רבנות. (This has also been claimed by the Star-K.)
  2. There is at least one city in Israel whose רבנות is not reliable for כשרות.
  3. Therefore, there is no Israeli city whose רבנות's (not "למהדרין") certification is reliable for all foods: there's no blanket reliability. Rather, any city's רבנות's (not "למהדרין") certification must be evaluated on a food-by-food basis (though it's possible that every certification it happens to grant at the moment is reliable).

I do not want to get into point #2. That will lead to arguments and, likely, לשון הרע. Rather, my questions are:

  • Is there anything wrong with the syllogism? That is, if #1 and #2 are true, is there any reason #3 wouldn't follow? Perhaps some mitigating factor, which may be some fact (m'tzius) that I haven't thought of?
  • Is #1 true? If not, was it ever? Proof, please? Especially, can anyone provide a citation to and quotation of such a law?
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    Possibly #3 wouldn't follow if a reliable rabbinate can come up with some kind of trick or workaround to ensure that this problem with food from the unreliable rabbinate doesn't arise in practice. Alternatively, there may be places where this problem de facto doesn't arise for some reason.
    – Fred
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 6:59
  • Can you list the specific law(year and number) so that we could check. I distinctly remember this not being the case the during the Shmitta year, with different municipalities taking different stances on heter machira. Unfortunately five years gone, I'm not sure if I can still dig up any of the materials about. Other than that I would ask the guy at Jerusalem Kosher News. He is quite knowledgeable about such issues.
    – Rabbi Michael Tzadok
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 10:48
  • @mekubal, that (specific law) is what I ask for in the question.
    – msh210 ♦
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 14:54
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    If there are other companies that make the same ingredient, but they are kosher enough, perhaps we would say Kol D'Parish M'Rubah Parish and it is nullified B'Rov
    – Menachem
    Commented Aug 5, 2013 at 18:43
  • @Menachem Hm? If the certifying agency knows where the ingredient came from?
    – msh210 ♦
    Commented Aug 5, 2013 at 22:58

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Not sure if this is what you're looking for but the fact that you now have an uncertainty about the presence of the "unreliable" rabbanut's ingredients in the purchased product certified by the "reliable" rabbanut is usually halachically relevant - e.g. if now there is a sefek sefeika (double uncetainty) or safek d'rabanan (l'kula). (Menachem's application of kol d'parish would depend on whether the case would be considered kavua or not - as in the case of meat bought in a city with 9 kosher butchers and one treif.)

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