| Kashrus Alert: A Mashgiach's Travels |

Eggs Galore

By Chaya Rosen | January 25, 2022

There are bunch of potential kashrus problems with eggs

As told to Chaya Rosen

Eggs Galore

Did you think all eggs are kosher? Think again! There are bunch of potential kashrus problems with eggs. Can you guess some of them?

I bet you said blood spots. While that could be a problem with organic or free-range eggs, it’s generally not an issue with eggs you buy in the supermarket that come from hatcheries. The chickens in hatcheries are very tightly controlled: From the time they start laying eggs, at about 13 weeks old, they are squished two chickens to a cage, and their only job in life is to lay eggs. They do not move, exercise, or do anything other than eat and drink a very specific diet (which affects the nutrition of the eggs, the hardness of the shell, and more), and lay eggs.

Where the egg comes from is also an important factor in its kashrus status. Only eggs from kosher birds are kosher — no snake eggs for you, sorry. And unless there’s a mesorah for the particular bird, you can’t eat the eggs, which is why some duck eggs are not kosher! Recently, while I was inspecting at a factory, I saw some huge eggs and was concerned about their origin. In the end they were kosher eggs, but it’s always important to check that unusually shaped eggs are indeed from kosher birds.

Did you know that factories and bakeries that use eggs don’t have workers standing and cracking millions of eggs? Rather, the egg factories do this work, and then sell containers of liquid eggs. There’s a halachic issue with keeping cracked eggs (egg liquid) overnight, similar to the problem with leaving peeled onions overnight. Some hashgachahs are maikel on this, others are makpid that the egg liquid be salted, and then allow the egg liquid to remain overnight. Once we worked with someone who committed to salting the liquid eggs, but we discovered that he stopped doing that. We took away his hashgachah, and he lost the sale of 500,000 pounds of eggs. Now we work with a different company to provide the eggs for our product.

Of course, this doesn’t come into play when you buy a carton of eggs. But liquid eggs are in so many things, as anyone with an egg allergy can tell you. They are used as emulsifiers, proteins, thickeners, in baked goods, and in many other processed foods. There can even be issues with dairy, because many companies that sell liquid eggs add milk to some of the eggs and sell a liquid-egg-and-milk mixture (the kind used when making French toast). Of course, that introduces a whole new set of problems with chalav stam!

When it comes to Pesach, there are additional issues. Chickens eat grains. Grains are chomtez. When eggs are washed in hot water before they’re packaged, is there a concern of chometz? The ink in the stamp can also have real chometz in it, as alcohol is used in some inks. In Eretz Yisrael, you don’t need to worry about these issues. They are super strict about it, and every single egg is stamped “kosher for Pesach.”

Here’s one more egg story for you. We were inspecting a hard-boiled egg factory, and we had to take away their hashgachah because the factory workers, non-Jews, were turning the fire under the eggs on and off (i.e. bishul akum). The owner argued that the electric panel was taped down, but, as we informed him, that was not nearly good enough for us!

Bonus!

Symbolic Symbols

Symbols, symbols everywhere. I’ll bet that many of you were symbol-spotting before you could even read. I’ve heard of kids who were convinced that an R inside a circle is a hechsher, because how different is that from a U or a K inside a circle, anyway?

Do you know what an R inside a circle means, then, if it’s not a hashgachah?

The symbol ® on a product means that it is a registered trademark. What’s that? To make a long story short, it means that the brand, logo, or symbol (like a hashgachah) is legally protected, and if a person or business uses that logo, brand, or symbol without permission from the trademark holder, it is illegal and they can get in big trouble.

A hechsher is legal property, and it’s not allowed to be used without permission. Every good hashgachah constantly monitors the use of its symbol to make sure that it is only ever printed when it should be. Because otherwise, any random guy could just place a kashrus symbol on his product — without any real hashgachah whatsoever. And that, of course, would be a serious problem!

Trademarks are well protected by law, and most food producers know not to use a hechsher falsely. The bigger the hashgachah is, the more power they have to take action against wrongdoers: They enforce their trademark fiercely and scare anyone from starting up with them. Some smaller hashgachahs don’t have this kind of power, and can’t always be as careful; always ask a qualified posek which hashgachahs you can trust.

Once, I walked into Walmart and saw ices with a mainstream hechsher. Something looked off to me, and I turned the ices over to study the ingredients. Lo and behold, there was actual milk in these ices — but the ices were labeled pareve. In short order, I made sure the hashgachah became aware of the issue, and within 24 hours the ices were recalled across the United States. Because it was a large, mainstream hechsher, they had connections with the big stores and were able to get the mislabeled products off the shelf. A few weeks later, the ices were back, this time labeled correctly.

Did you know that if something looks strange, you can call the kashrus agency to ask them about it? Reading the ingredients can also help ensure fewer problems (like eating yummy ices… with some milk inside… after your spaghetti and meatballs. Yikes!).

Trademarks are protected by international law, but nonetheless, some people do try to get away with misusing hashgachahs. In some cases it is an actual, honest mistake, such as a misprint. In other cases, less-than-scrupulous people try their luck and hope no one catches them.

Another horrifying instance of a mislabel was a package found in a grocery store. Clearly labeled in big, capital letters, the text read: BONELESS SLICED HARDWOOD SMOKED HAM STEAK. Ham comes from pork, the meat of a pig — chazir. And just an inch away from the word “ham” was the kashrus symbol.

This gets even more complicated considering the new products flooding the market: fully kosher, vegetarian, pareve “ham” products that aren’t really pork, but are engineered to taste like it. Buyer beware.

In other words: If something looks wrong, don’t just shrug and trust the symbol. Always ask!