Today, many food ingredients, as well as the final food product, are often made far away from the grocery shelves, particularly in the Far East, Elefant said. Therefore, the OU has become a global operation, with a presence in 80 countries.
In addition, “the equipment used to manufacture food is all obviously new equipment that didn’t exist in the time of the Talmud,” he said. In the current era of mass food production, the OU has needed to find out how to make production equipment kosher without the guidance of original source material with instructions on the issue.
Contemporary rabbis need to be “extremely knowledgeable in understanding the machinery that manufactures food,” and in knowing how to conduct the koshering process without breaking “a piece of equipment that costs millions of dollars,” Elefant said.
One issue that comes up with regard to Passover and food, according to Roger Horowitz, involves oils that may be used during the holiday. For instance, corn oil cannot be used, so rabbis must figure out how to control the oil while it is being shipped in trucks across long distances in order to make sure the oil is not contaminated. All tankers need to be washed and sealed by rabbis before they can be reloaded, and any holding tanks must also be monitored by rabbis. Then, inside the factories, sophisticated control systems are also in place.
“You have to embed kosher requirements into the very food system, and what’s remarkable is how successful Orthodox Jews have been in embedding those requirements in our industrial food system,” Horowitz said.
Elefant cited another example of a product the OU has certified for Passover – canned tuna.
“Over the years, we have made [specialized Passover] runs of tuna for Chicken of the Sea, Bumblebee, etc.,” he said. “The tuna itself as a fish is inherently kosher for Passover. But all the other ingredients to make the tuna, [like] the vegetable broth that they sometimes put into the tuna…are not necessarily kosher for Passover.”
In yet another illustration, coffee doesn’t always require an OUP label to be considered kosher for Passover. Decaffeinated coffee, however, can only be consumed on Passover if the decaffeination process does not involve an alcohol made out of grains or corn. Brands the OU deems appropriate for Passover include Nescafe’s Taster’s Choice and Folgers.
“We had to review the entire decaffeination process to make sure there’s no issue,” Elefant said, noting that in these cases, the products were deemed appropriate for the Jewish holiday as they are. Yet in the case of Bosco chocolate syrup, which has also been labeled OUP, a separate version of the syrup needed to be made for Passover.
Statistics compiled by Lubicom Marketing Consulting for last year’s annual Kosherfest trade event indicated that there were 600 new products for Passover, and that 40 percent of annual kosher food sales came during the roughly month-long period including and surrounding Passover.
Passover is the “most widely observed holiday on the Jewish calendar,” said Lubicom president Menachem Lubinsky, with an estimated 70 percent of all U.S. Jews attending at least one Passover Seder.
Lubinsky added that making special Passover runs of products does not stop at food.
Aluminum foil companies producing kosher-for-Passover foil “have to use cleaning agents that are [suitable] for Passover. They do a special run and they have an OUP on them. The amount of those products that is consumed for Passover is enormous…[and] it’s good business [for the company to produce them].”
On the marketing side of the issue, Lubinsky sees a growth in the advertising of kosher-for-Passover products.
“You see a lot of supermarket ads that highlight Passover specials. There are also a lot online apps with Passover products. I see technology being used in a big way,” he said.