How To Keep It OK For Kosher

The market for kosher food—food that meets Jewish religious dietary rules—is expanding fast. In the 1980s North American consumers spent about US$250 million a year on kosher products. Today that figure has grown to around US$150 billion. Estimates suggest sales are growing 15 per cent a year.

It’s not just Jews who eat kosher food. Muslims may look for kosher food when halal labelling is not available, Many health-conscious consumers look for kosher. As religious rules say kosher food must be marked—usually with a ‘D’—if it contains dairy products, lactoseintolerant people look for kosher labelling too. Vegetarians may also look out for a ‘P’ on a kosher label (meaning the food is ‘pareve’ or neutral, containing neither meat nor dairy products.) Increasingly, big supermarket chains require kosher certification for own-label products. And more and more East Asian suppliers are finding that foreign companies need to know if their products are certified kosher. To find out more, Asia Food Journal met Rabbis Avrom Pollak and Jonah Gewirtz, of Star-K Kosher Certification of the US, on one of their visits to China.



How common is kosher certification on food in North American supermarkets?
Rabbi Avrom Pollak: Your cereals, your beverages, your confectionery items will all be kosher certified, because the consumers are looking for that.

Even mineral water in the US—which doesn’t require kosher certification—will have a kosher symbol on it as a marketing tool. That means the people who sell ingredients to these companies have to be kosher certified. And that’s where China and Korea and all these countries come in.

What should non-religious food firms avoid?
AP: A meat item, a fish item or wine: These are items that there’s no way the manufacturer can satisfy the kosher requirements at a competitive cost.

Why is there such a lot of interest in kosher in China?
AP: Fifteen years ago when we first came to China, there was tremendous overcapacity in making food additives. Then, very little was being sold abroad. Part of the reason was there just was no trade between the US and China. But it was also due to the fact that the culture of Chinese cultures were used to the idea of telling the customer what the customer should want. And if a customer wanted 25kg bags and the company felt like making it in a 50kg bag, then too bad. They realised that they needed to foll

ow the specifications of customers when it came to moisture content and granule size or 100 other details that are important. They realised that you are not going to tell Coca-Cola how it should receive ingredients if they wanted to do business.

Jews and Muslims may not always get on. But their religions Islam and Judaism share many roots.How easy is it for a company with halal certification to get kosher certification as well?
AP: Generally it is easier for a company with halal certification to get kosher certification. But it is by no means a guarantee.

Rabbi Jonah Gewirtz: In the Islamic world they’re not so concerned with utensils. They’re concerned only with ingredients.

AP: Kosher concerns ingredients and equipment. In other words: what else is made on that equipment. There are a number of animal items that are acceptable—are halal—to the Muslim community but aren’t necessarily acceptable to the Jewish community.

'Generally it is easier for a company with halal certification to get kosher certification. But it is by no means a guarantee.'



Where are the main differences?
AP: Certain marine creatures–any crustaceans, any molluscs—are not acceptable for kosher. Also the method of slaughter, say for goats or beef, which can be kosher. But they must be slaughtered in a specific way by a trained rabbi. Many many Muslims will accept kosher meat, because the Koran says the meat of the ‘people of the book’ [Jews and Christians] is acceptable.

JG: The criteria is that the animals should not be slaughtered for idolatry or paganism. And for both kosher and halal there should be no pork or lard.

AP: Practically speaking, both halal and kosher require that the processing aids and the ingredients be free of any animal origin.

What ingredients cause problems?
AP: Sometimes you’ll find an emulsifier that is a fatty-acid derivative. Fatty acids can be derived from animal fats or from plant materials. To be either kosher or halal most often it will be of plant origin. It’s way too complicated and cumbersome to either kosher or halal certify— even though it’s theoretically possible.

What about sterilisation of processing lines?
AP: We’re not necessarily concerned with sterilisation but what we call ‘kosherisation’. The concept—which has been shown to be scientifically valid—goes back thousands of years. The Bible says that the only way to cleanse certain food vessels of non-kosher foods is to purge them in boiling water. The idea is that metals in particular are porous—even stainless steel The kosher laws state that some flavour or some taste of the material that is absorbed into the walls of the vessel and the only way to get them out is the way they came in. Which if is through heat then it is through heat at a higher degree. Only certain types of material can be kosherised. For example plastic cannot.

What are the main mistakes that firms make when applying for kosher certification?
AP: What happens time and time again, is that companies have got a good product, and they want to introduce it overseas. They get potential customers, and then they’re told that they need kosher certification. They scramble at the last moment to get that. Sometimes it’s very difficult to do it. But had they made minor modifications early, they’d have been able to get kosher certification. You need to think about it early on in the planning stage for introducing a product overseas.

JG: Many companies that we deal with do all kinds of research and development on their products. And then they say ‘Rabbi, now can we get it kosher certified?’ And I say why the heck don’t you start with a kosher base, a kosher ingredient, a kosher additive and then build on that. Otherwise they’ll then have to go looking for replacements.