Kosher food cer­ti­fi­ca­tion has come a long way in the past one hun­dred years (see my ear­li­er posts on the Baff Mur­der and the L.A. kosher meat scan­dal). Con­sumer vig­i­lance has been a key fac­tor in improv­ing the reli­a­bil­i­ty of kosher cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Of the esti­mat­ed 12 mil­lion Amer­i­can con­sumers who buy kosher prod­ucts because they are cer­ti­fied kosher, 8% are reli­gious Jews who eat only kosher food. This core of reli­gious­ly obser­vant con­sumers is high­ly moti­vat­ed to mon­i­tor the reli­a­bil­i­ty of kosher cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. They call agency hot­lines to report improp­er­ly labeled prod­ucts — for exam­ple, prod­ucts with a pareve (indi­cat­ing the absence of any dairy prod­ucts) label that nonethe­less list dairy ingre­di­ents on their pack­ages, pack­ages with agency sym­bols that appear to be coun­ter­feit, or items that con­tain ingre­di­ents that the con­sumers sus­pect are not kosher.

The role of active con­sumers in help­ing agen­cies mon­i­tor food com­pa­nies is illus­trat­ed by the sto­ry of an Ortho­dox Union (OU)-certified com­pa­ny that made cook­ies-and-cream ice cream with cook­ie pieces in it. One day, the com­pa­ny noti­fied OU exec­u­tive rab­binic coor­di­na­tor Rab­bi Yaakov Luban that it had received a new account from a client who want­ed cook­ies-and-cream ice cream made with real Ore­os, which at the time were made with lard and were there­fore not kosher. The com­pa­ny promised to keep the Oreo cook­ies-and-cream pro­duc­tion sep­a­rate from the kosher pro­duc­tion, and the OU, after much delib­er­a­tion, allowed the arrangement.

Sev­er­al months lat­er, a kosher con­sumer called the OU and report­ed that while eat­ing OU-cer­ti­fied cook­ies-and-cream ice cream she dis­cov­ered Oreo cook­ie pieces in it. As a reli­gious kosher con­sumer, she knew that Ore­os were not kosher cer­ti­fied. Luban went to the com­pa­ny and request­ed ten box­es of cook­ies-and-cream ice cream, took them back to the OU offices, and put them under the faucet to melt off the ice cream, where­upon he dis­cov­ered Oreo cook­ie pieces in all ten boxes. 

When the OU con­front­ed the com­pa­ny, the man­ag­er explained that the account for the Oreo cook­ies-and-cream ice cream had been can­celled after the com­pa­ny had pur­chased $25,000 worth of Ore­os with a rel­a­tive­ly short expi­ra­tion date. After attempt­ing to find a new client for them, the com­pa­ny decid­ed to use the Ore­os in the kosher production. 

The OU noti­fied the com­pa­ny that it was ter­mi­nat­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The com­pa­ny own­er called OU rab­binic admin­is­tra­tor Rab­bi Men­achem Genack in a pan­ic and explained that he had just acquired the com­pa­ny a few weeks pri­or for $25 mil­lion and had been unaware of the wrong­do­ing. He explained that with­out OU cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the com­pa­ny would be worth­less since its pri­vate-label busi­ness depend­ed on kosher cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The own­er offered to fire the entire staff and start over if the OU would main­tain its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The OU agreed to con­tin­ue cer­ti­fi­ca­tion if the own­er fired the entire staff and paid for con­stant super­vi­sion to over­see pro­duc­tion. The own­er eager­ly accept­ed this arrangement.

The con­sumer vig­i­lance demon­strat­ed by this sto­ry pro­vides a much need­ed lay­er of addi­tion­al over­sight that strength­ens the reli­a­bil­i­ty of kosher supervision.