Real Dairy Vegan Ice Cream?

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.

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The Gerald & Karin Feldhamer OU Kosher Halacha Yomis is dedicated to the memory of Rav Yisroel Belsky, zt"l, who served as halachic consultant for OU Kosher for more than 28 years; many of the responses in Halacha Yomis are based on the rulings of Rabbi Belsky. Subscribe to the Halacha Yomis daily email here.