can someone explain why this Kosher symbol?

[justincase]

I've become a little bit of an obsessive label reader and just noticed that the ancient bottle of Hershey's syrup in the back of my fridge is marked with the OU symbol (U in a circle) followed by D for dairy. Yet my scan of the ingredients turns up no dairy (lots of other yucky stuff, though! ) Am I being dense? Can someone explain?

[missym]

The OU-D symbol is also used on a product which was prepared on the same equipment as that used to heat dairy ingredients, even if the product itself contains no dairy or derivatives. I haven't looked at the ingredient list, but I suspect that is the case with the chocolate syrup.

[justincase]

Thanks! That makes sense. FWIW, the ingredients are:

high fructose corn syrup
corn syrup
water
cocoa
sugar
contains 2% or less of:
potassium sorbate
salt
mono- and diglycerides
xanthan gum
polysorbate 60
vanillin
artificial flavor

[Nechums]

The organization that provides the OU used to use an OU-DE if the product itself was not dairy but only made on dairy equipment. This led to some confusion amongst consumers, so now they just use the OU-D regardless if it's dairy or just made on dairy equipment.

[Piglet]

Ditto the above - it is the kosher equivalent of "processed in a plant that processes milk". Other kosher certification will state dairy equipment in this case. The other thing to consider though is that there are many milk derivatives that pop up in products that you wouldn't guess. The best example is that regular 7-11 slurpees are non-dairy, but one of the flavours (diet Pepsi, I think) is dairy. Sometimes one of the ingredients is a milk derivative, in this case sodium caseinate - an agent that keeps it from freezing, since it lacks the sugar that would normally give it a less oslid freeze. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slurpee...ry_information