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The Truth About Milk & Cookies

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By Avi Frier - FJN Publisher

Kashrut authorities differ on the use of the “D.E.” designation on Kosher-supervised products


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If David Clements of Hollywood takes a bite of a food containing even the slightest traces of milk, he is in for a potentially life threatening allergic reaction. 

“We have to be very careful,” said Stephen Clements, David’s father. “At camp a few summers ago, someone dished out non-dairy sorbet using a spoon that had been used to serve ice cream. 

A little while later, David took sorbet from that container and wound up in the emergency room.”

But Clements, a rising eleventh grader at the Weinbaum Yeshiva High School in Boca Raton can eat an entire bag of Oreo cookies without so much as a tickle in his throat, despite the fact that the Orthodox Union (OU), which provides Kashrut supervision for Oreo and other Nabisco products, has designated Oreos as dairy.

This is because the OU has opted to mark all products produced on the same equipment used to produce dairy products as dairy, even if the equipment has been cleaned and no dairy ingredients can be found in the product. 

Other national Kashrut agencies, such as the O.K. and the Kof-K designate these foods with “D.E.” an abbreviation indicating that the product’s ingredients are completely Pareve (neutral, containing no meat or dairy), but that it was produced on dairy equipment.

Jewish Law forbids mixing milk and meat, and requires the use of separate dishes and utensils for meat and dairy foods; additionally, after eating meat, one must wait a number of hours before eating dairy (the number of hours varies by custom, and can range from three to six). 

According to all Ashkenazic and some Sephardic interpretations of Halacha (Jewish Law), Pareve foods produced on dairy equipment may not be eaten with meat, and may not be prepared or served using meat utensils, but may be eaten immediately after meat.

Rabbi Yaakov Luban, Senior Rabbinic Coordinator at the OU Kashrut Division, says that the OU has fielded numerous requests to adopt the D.E. designation, but they have resisted the change.

“Our purpose is to bring Kashrut to the masses,” Rabbi Luban told the Florida Jewish News. “Since most people do not understand the ramifications of the D.E.’s Halachic status, adopting the D.E. would create confusion for Kosher consumers.”

For those who are familiar with the ramifications of the D.E. status, a call to the OU’s Kashrut hotline (212-613-8241) can reveal which products marked OU-D are actually dairy and which are only produced on dairy equipment. 

But the OU representative answering the phone told the Florida Jewish News that they don’t publish a list of these products; consumers must ask about specific brands.  The OU did confirm that as long as no dairy ingredients, such as milk, whey, or casein, are listed on the package, Oreo cookies are indeed Pareve, but produced on dairy equipment.

Rabbi Yehuda Rosenbaum, Administrative Director at the Kof-K, says that labeling a product as dairy, when it was only made on dairy equipment, is what creates confusion for the consumer. 

Rabbi Rosenbaum points out that it can be a dangerous habit to rely on ingredients to determine a product’s status, and not on the Kashrut organizations that are entrusted with disseminating this information.

One of the biggest problems with relying on the ingredients to determine a product’s Pareve status is that there are several dairy ingredients that consumers might not recognize as dairy when they see them listed by name. 

Some of the most common are whey, lactose, casein, sodium caseinate, and calcium caseinate.  Even when “natural flavors” appear on the ingredients panel, these flavors can be dairy derivatives.

To add to the confusion, even products labeled as non-dairy, such as coffee creamers, can be dairy according to Jewish law. 

According to federal regulations, creamers containing less than a certain percentage of milk fat must be labeled “non-dairy,” however these creamers do contain sodium caseinate, which renders them dairy according to Jewish law.

“That’s why we always write something under the Kof-K symbol on every package, whether it’s meat, Pareve, dairy, or D.E.,” Rosenbaum said. “If you see a Kof-K with nothing under it, which under normal circumstances would never happen, that’s when you should have to call and ask.”

In 1986, Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, Rosh Yeshiva of New York’s Yeshiva Torah V’Da’as, was a Halachic consultant for the Kof-K. 

It was then that Kof-K administrators, who had encountered a situation of Italian ices being produced on the same equipment used to make ice cream, first posed the question of whether they could designate products with a D.E.  Since this was not yet a well-known concept, Rabbi Belsky permitted the designation, as long as efforts were made to educate the public as to the Halachic intricacies involving Pareve products produced in this manner.  Rabbi Belsky also asked the Kof-K to urge other Kashrut agencies to begin using the D.E., so that consumers would grow accustomed to seeing it.

Rabbi Belsky, who is on summer vacation and could not be reached for comment, is now the Senior Halachic Consultant for the OU Kashrut Division.

Chalav Yisrael

Another issue figuring into the D.E. debate is the law of Chalav Yisrael. 

Halacha dictates that a Jew may only consume milk produced in the presence of a Torah-observant Jew, since without proper supervision, one does not know whether the milk came from a kosher or a non-kosher animal (the latter would render the milk non-kosher).  Although most modern day Halachic authorities have ruled that government regulations are stringent enough that Kosher consumers in the United States can be lenient with this law (especially in communities where Chalav Yisrael products are not easily available), there are many who opt to keep it.

For this reason, the Baltimore-based Star?K also does not use the D.E. designation. 

Star?K President, Rabbi Dr. Avrom Pollak, told the Florida Jewish News that people who keep the laws of Chalav Yisrael consider non-Chalav Yisrael milk to be non-Kosher altogether. 

“According to them, any food produced on the same equipment would be completely tref (non-kosher),” Pollak said. 

“For their sake, we don’t put our seal on these types of products.”

But O.K. head Rabbi Don Yoel Levy contends that ­there is no assumption made by Chalav Yisrael consumers that products marked dairy or D.E. are Chalav Yisrael unless they are specified as such. 

“We were the first to use the D.E. when we began placing it on Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews in the late 1970’s,” Levy said. 

“Since then, the majority, if not all of the products we’ve marked with the D.E. were not Chalav Yisrael.”

People who are meticulous in the area of Chalav Yisrael know what to look for, and will not be misled by the presence of the D.E. mark, Levy said.


Posted by Avi Frier - FJN Publisher on 07/18 at 12:08 PM • Hits: 1136



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