From a tin of beans to a million products: the story of the OU

Turn over an imported jar, tin or packet in a kosher shop and there is a good chance you will find a letter U inside a letter O. That is the symbol of OU Kosher, and few kosher marks travel further. This is the second article in our series on the people behind the symbols on your shopping, and it takes us across the Atlantic to New York.

Who is behind the OU?

OU Kosher is the kashrut division of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, better known as the Orthodox Union, which is based in New York. Its certification work began in the early 1920s. Kosher food was already a public matter in the city by then: New York had passed a law against kosher fraud in 1915 and strengthened it in 1920.

The push into supervision came from within. According to the OU’s own history, it was the organisation’s Women’s Branch that urged it to take on kashrut, at a time when the Union had kept its distance from supervision work. The division then grew considerably between the 1950s and the 1970s under Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg.

How big is it today?

By October 2019 the OU was certifying around one million products, made in more than 12,000 plants in 104 countries, with 886 mashgichim, or kashrut supervisors, at work. One widely cited estimate puts its share at about 70% of the kosher food produced worldwide. The 104-country figure was already in place two years earlier: in 2017 the OU reported that kosher-certified production had reached 104 countries.

It started with a tin of beans

The first product to carry the OU symbol was Heinz vegetarian baked beans. It is a pleasing detail for British readers, for whom a tin of Heinz beans is about as ordinary as shopping gets. From that single tin, the mark has grown to cover around a million products made in 104 countries.

What the letters next to the symbol mean

The OU symbol often comes with a short suffix. It is worth learning them, because they tell you how a product fits into a kosher kitchen:

• OU-D: dairy.
• OU-DE: dairy equipment.
• OU-Meat or OU-Glatt: meat.
• OU-Fish: fish.
• OU-P: kosher for Passover, containing no chametz or kitniyot.
• OU-Kitniyot: a separate designation for kitniyot.

A note for Pesach: OU poskim treat aspartame as permitted on Passover, which is why Diet Coke can carry the OU-P. When you are stocking up before Pesach, then, the suffix matters as much as the symbol, so look for the P rather than the OU on its own.

How to check a product

Not every question can be answered by looking at the pack. The OU offers two tools for shoppers:

• The OU Kosher app, launched in 2012.
• OU Kosher Alerts, the notices the OU publishes for consumers about specific products.

The symbol itself is closely protected. It is an internationally registered certification mark, and it is registered with US Customs, which can seize imports that misuse it. The OU treats unauthorised use as infringement, even on items that are not food. That is also why you will not see the logo reproduced on this page.

Three things you might not know

1. One of the world’s best-known kosher symbols made its debut on a tin of Heinz baked beans.
2. It was the OU’s Women’s Branch that pushed the organisation into kashrut, after it had previously stayed out of supervision.
3. US Customs can seize imported goods that carry the OU symbol without permission.

On The Kosher Shop, every food seller tells us which kashrut authority supervises their products, and we check the certificate before their shop opens. Next in this series: the Manchester Beth Din, whose MK mark appears on Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

Sources: Wikipedia: Orthodox Union Kosher; OU Kosher: The beginnings of OU Kosher; OU Kosher: The illegal OU; Orthodox Union, 2017; Wikipedia: Kosher certification agency. Figures are as reported in October 2019.