Page 71 - cRc Pesach Guide 2021

Rabbi Sholem Fishbane
cRc Kashrus Administrator

DAIRY

EQUIPMENT

Separating Facts

from Myths

Often a food package bears a kosher symbol followed by a if machinery was used to process dairy powders and then
D or a DE, which most of us understand to indicate that the used for pareve powders, such as colored sugar. To wash the
food contained therein is either dairy (in the case of the D) or machinery with water is not practical, since even the smallest
processed on the same equipment as dairy (as symbolized amount of leftover moisture would cause the powders to
by the DE). clump. So how is one food cleaned out before another one
is processed?
But more often than not, these symbols raise more questions
than they answer. Why is a food marked as dairy when I see The standard procedure is to run the second product, in this
no dairy ingredients on the package? If I keep chalav Yisrael case colored sugar, through the machinery until the company
do I need to avoid DE? May I eat it with or right after meat? determines that all residue of the previous product has been
How come some things can be labeled as dairy in the allergen flushed out. The tainted sugar powder is then discarded, and
information but the hechsher indicates that they are pareve, the company is sufficiently confident that whatever they
and other products have a D or a DE but have no allergen process from then on is free of significant residue from the
warning at all? previous product.

And then to answer the greatest question of all: Which Oreos The hechsher, however, is not quite convinced.
are really dairy, and which are not?
A case in point would be Trader Joe’s chocolate chips, which
To understand the answers to these questions--and many some readers may recall switched from being designated by
more--let’s take a deep dive into the world of dairy processing. the OK as pareve, to dairy.
We will begin by understanding some reasons why a product This was because it came to the attention of the OK that
that does not appear to contain any dairy may nonetheless the chips were packaged on the same machinery as dairy
be labeled as such. chocolate chips. And even after the company flushed out
the lines with chocolate chips to be discarded, occasionally
dairy chips were still found in the non-dairy batch. These
TAINTED MACHINERY are actual dairy chips, and if they would be ingested by
A common scenario is when the pareve food is processed someone who is allergic to dairy, that person could become
on equipment that had also been used for hot dairy food, ill. So, while one can rightfully argue that the small amount of
and the equipment was not kashered in between. While dairy chips would be botul (nullified) which leads us to a new
most agencies will correctly mark this as DE, some will, for internal term amongst kashrus agencies called “dairy botul”,
simplicity sake, just put a D next to their logo. it nevertheless is correct to designate the “pareve” chips as
“dairy”.
This is the case for Silk soymilk, David sunflower seeds,
Pedialyte drink, many of the Hershey’s syrups, and some Kind Another possibility is when the food contains a flavoring that
Bars, all of which are marked as D because the manufacturing has dairy in it. Even though it is a minute amount relative to
lines are not kashered between runs. the food itself, since it provides flavor, it is not necessarily
nullified by the ratio of 1/60. Additionally, a unique aspect of
Another possibility involves dry ingredients. For example,

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