What does it really mean for your Hebrew National hot dog to “answer to a higher authority?”
For years, it’s meant a kosher certification that ensured Jewish (and non-Jewish) consumers were buying a product that met strict religious standards for slaughter and preparation that went beyond government requirements.
Now a controversial Jewish movement believes kosher food must meet an even higher ethical ideal — and they’re rolling out a stamp of approval to make it official.
The new Magen Tzedek “seal of justice,” developed by Conservative Judaism’s Hekhsher Tzedek Commission will be tested on at least two kosher food companies in early 2011.

This wonderful new initiative publically stakes a claim about the importance of ethics and the importance of acknowledging and rewarding companies which work to the standard of Jewish law. The only reasons why the move is controversial are because of unnecessary fear about possible confusion, and some groups’ attachment to inappropriate monopolies which they want perpetuate.
Let’s be clear, there is no uniformly agreed upon ethical standard in Jewish law, just as there is a range of opinion about what measure must be met in order to label a food ritually kosher. So people are always free to pick and choose as their conscience and understand of the law dictates.
All this new seal of approval does is offer one more way to know how your food got to you and whether or not having traveled that path, it is something which you want to consume. In other words, without challenging any conventional understandings of kashrut, the new Magen Tzedek simply offers the assurance that a set of ethical concerns, previously unaddressed, is being carefully thought of. How could this be anything other than something to celebrate?

In no way, will this threaten the monopoly on ritual kashrut certification currently held by the Orthodox community. What it might do, especially for Jews for whom those rules have no meaning, is create a new way think about eating Jewishly, one about which they might care deeply. In effect, among the many great things which Magen Tzedek could accomplish is the reintegration of eating and meaning for thousands of people, people for who that connection is currently broken. Not only is that magnificent, it addresses a core concern of traditional Judaism i.e. maintaining the connection between the physical and the spiritual aspects of our lives.
Were I cynical, I might explore the possibility that the real fear among some members of the Orthodox rabbinic establishment, is that Magen Tzedek presents a more liberal stream of Judaism, in this case the Conservative movement, as being more legally demanding than their Orthodox brothers and sisters. As I hope that is not the case, I will not explore that possibility further.
I would simply remind us all that it’s a big Torah and different people and different communities will have to master it in different ways – there are plenty of mitzvot to go around, so I don’t think than anyone need be jealous that one group is better at some of them than others.
Personally, I don’t know yet how my own eating practices will be effected by the presence or the absence of this new seal of good ethical practice, but I am already deeply grateful to both Heksher Tzedek (creator of the Magen Tzedek seal) and its founder, Rabbi Morris Allen for making me ask that very question.