Duncan Hines to Offer OU Certified Pareve Cakes Again

There is good news for kosher consumers who want their Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Cake Mixes, certified kosher by the Orthodox Union, to have pareve and non-dairy status. The company has reversed a decision made in 2005 to switch the product to dairy, therefore rendering it unusable for cakes that are served with meat meals at the Sabbath table. The product line includes Moist Deluxe Classic Yellow, the best selling cake mix in the country, and other consumer favorites such as Devil’s Food, Lemon Supreme and Butter Recipe Golden.

Pareve production began in September and Duncan Hines has begun shipping product to stores. It should be in most locations by November and December, the company says.

In other Kashrut news from the cRc website:

Pocahontas Brand Pork and Beans in Tomato Sauce– Food Service (#10 can) mistakenly bears an unauthorized OU symbol. The product is being withdrawn from the marketplace.

Dominion Farms in Texas has made statements that might be construed as them being under the supervision of the cRc. They have supplied live cattle for kosher shechita, but are not certified by the cRc.

It has come to our attention that packages of barley, such as those used for soup or cholent, may contain larva, insects or even live worms! This problem is not isolated to any specific brand or store. It is strongly suggested that each package of barley, or other similar grains, be inspected prior to use.

Bareman’s Gourmet Heavy Cream is dairy, as indicated on the ingredient panel. However, the “D” was inadvertently omitted and the package only bears a plain cRc. The product is indeed dairy. Future packaging is being revised.

KNORR BEEF BOUILLON (the kosher variety) which contains lactose, has been erroneously been marked as Pareve. The product is Dairy.

So, to recap… Duncan Hines cakes are pareve again, pork is still treif(!), Beef Bouillon is Dairy, and beware of live worms in your cholent. Betei’avon and beware!

What’s worse? Finding over 700 pounds of pot at a Kosher Slaughterhouse or finding out that the Kosher Slaughterhouse isn’t so Kosher after all?

From the Forward:

Pot Bust, Meat Scam Hit Kosher Companies

The evening of August 30 was a dark one for the kosher food industry.

First, a group of rabbis in New York discovered boxes upon boxes of nonkosher meat in the warehouse of a major kosher meat distributor. At roughly the same time, in Pennsylvania, federal agents seized 726 pounds of marijuana at a kosher slaughterhouse.

The drug bust occurred in Birdsboro at the G & G Poultry facility, which produces kosher chicken under the strictest rabbinic supervision. According to an affidavit from a federal customs agent, the authorities tracked the movement of marijuana in and out of the factory’s parking lot for more than a week before moving in. Of the four people who were arrested during the raid, three appeared to be G & G employees; however, none of them was Jewish. Two of the men arrested in the bust, which was first reported by the Reading Eagle, were undocumented Mexican immigrants, authorities said in a statement.

For kosher consumers, the more disconcerting news came from Monsey, N.Y., where rabbis found packages of nonkosher meat in the storeroom of a local kosher meat distributor. There was no immediate announcement about how long the nonkosher meat had been on the shelves, but Monsey, a heavily Orthodox town, has been plastered with handbills and letters warning residents to ritually cleanse, or kasher, any kitchen supplies that may have touched meat from the wholesaler, Shevach Quality Meats.

Giving voice to the gravity of the issue, Rabbi Meir Weissmandel, a local eminence, wrote a letter to locals Sunday, September 3, speaking of “this appalling transgression: the conspiracy of betrayers who misled the many and deceived in order to mislead Jewish souls and make them impure.” [more…]