Pictured: Cheese. Image by Getty

By Aiden Pink May 9, 2017

For the first time, the Canadian government has introduced criminal charges against a company for falsely claiming that its products were kosher.

The company Creation Foods and its vice-president Kefir Sadiklar have been accused by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency of sending non-kosher cheddar cheese to Jewish summer camps in 2015 with forged documents that falsely certified its kosher status.

According to documents submitted to the government agency, Jewish leaders first noticed an issue when a camp received a shipment of cheese where some boxes contained the certification symbol from the Kashruth Council of Canada and others did not. A Kashruth Council employee then asked Sadiklar to prove the kosher status of the cheeses. Sadiklar first sent a certificate for the wrong food, and then sent one in which a digit in the product code appeared to be Photoshopped – making it seem like it had received approval.

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Knowingly sending non-kosher food would be “negligent and hurtful,” the Kashruth Council’s managing director, Richard Rabkin, told the Toronto Star. “In my estimation that’s a terrible thing to do and that’s the way we feel in this case.”

Sadiklar faces the prospect of heavy fines and possibly even jail time.

Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter at @aidenpink.

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