[Avodah] To DE or to D no E?

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 10:40:55PM +0000, rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com wrote:
: Q: Why no DE label anymore?
: A: nat bar nat is too complex.  We use D only to avoid confusion.

It's not just nat bar nat, it's teaching the masses about sheish sha'os.

: I was taken aback. Can't OU educate the public on its website w/o
: "dumbing down its labels"?

I believe you're making more of it than necessary. There was a time when
hashgachos didn't say "D" at all. You were expected to know that if
were milchig, the OU (for example) would make sure the milchig product
was in the ingredient list. But not everyone knew things like sodium
cassienate are milchig, so they added the D.

The only people who wouldn't know that a D-labeled product isn't really
DE are the same people who don't know what to look on the ingredient
list. Anyone up the learning curve to know the halakhos of DE would
hopefully be in a position to make the determination themselves.

IOW, writing D vs DE is the dumbing down, not the other way around.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I have great faith in optimism as a philosophy,
micha at aishdas.org        if only because it offers us the opportunity of
http://www.aishdas.org   self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                              - Arthur C. Clarke