[Avodah] Vegan Restaurant Without Hashgacha

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 08:14:40AM -0400, Prof. Levine via Avodah wrote:
> From today's OU kosher halacha yomis
...
> A. No. Rolls may contain non-kosher oils, stabilizers and emulsifiers.

It depends on why they're vegan. Those motivated by Eastern Religions
are maqpidim not only on miniscule ingrediants, but also many care about
vegan keilim. Certainly to the point that I would think stam keilim
einam ben yoman is a safe assumption.

E.g. see
https://www.quora.com/Why-would-a-vegan-or-vegetarian-insist-that-separate-cooking-vessels-or-utensils-be-used-from-those-used-in-cooking-meat-dishes

It is true that "certified vegan" <vegan.org> doesn't go that far,
but some smaller cetification agencies like V Label do
<http://www.vlabel.org>.

So, I am not sure why the OU makes such a pessimistic blanket statement
about all vegans. I would have gone by spelling out that you would need
to be a very savy consumer to know what they mean by "vegan". And otherwise
the word alone doesn't tell you anything.

Or explain why even the die-hard vegans aren't trying to check for
everything we do.

Because if saying you're "very very vegan" when you're not is a risk
to business, I would want to see an argument about why the claim isn't
in principle sufficient, or pragmatically hard to make use of.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   suffering, but only to one's own suffering.
Author: Widen Your Tent                    -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF