[Avodah] OU Dairy and Vegan Ice Cream

[Prof. Levine]

 From the OU Kosher Halacha Yomis

Q. I bought a tub of vegan ?ice cream?. It is certified OU-D. I know 
that OUD can either mean that the product contains actual dairy 
ingredients, or it was made on dairy equipment (this is commonly 
referred to as DE). If it contains actual dairy, it may not be 
consumed after meat, while DE products can be eaten after meat but 
not with meat. I contacted the OU and was told that this tub of ice 
cream must be treated as actual dairy. How can there be dairy 
ingredients in the ice cream if it is labeled vegan?

A. This particular vegan ice cream is labeled OUD because the flavor 
is certified dairy by the supervising agency. Apparently, the vegan 
company assumes that this flavor is DE and not actual dairy. 
Nonetheless, it is extremely difficult to make this determination 
because there are many layers to a flavor. A typical flavor is 
compounded from many ingredients. Some of the ingredients may be 
other flavors that are also made from multiple ingredients, some of 
which might also be flavors. An added element of complexity is that 
the various flavor components may be manufactured by multiple 
vendors, and each company may have a different hashgacha. When 
flavors are certified as dairy, the OU often finds it nearly 
impossible to track down every sub-ingredient and establish whether 
they are real dairy or DE. For sake of simplicity and because of the 
uncertainty, the OU tells consumers to treat the product as real 
dairy. In the case of the vegan ice cream, perhaps the manufacturer 
checked all the sub-ingredients and determined that they were DE and 
worthy of a vegan status, but it is possible that the investigation 
was not thorough and their decision to treat the ice cream as vegan 
was based on assumptions. Because the investigative process is so 
difficult, the OU would not rely on the evaluation of the vegan 
company without independent verification, which we are unable to do. 
For these reasons, we consider the item to be real dairy.

___________________________________________________________

This email shows that one cannot rely on the list of ingredients on 
the label of a product to determine its kosher status.

YL


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