Requirements
The summary of EMET-R-01 — the requirements a manufacturer is measured against. Published because nobody should have to apply in order to find out what they are being asked to meet.
Emet certifies products, made at one named plant. A certificate names your company, names the facility, and lists the products it covers, each with its kosher classification — pareve, dairy or meat — and the brands it is sold under.
It does not certify your company, and there is no such thing as an “Emet-certified plant”. The same product made at a second site is a separate application and a separate certificate.
A kosher certificate is a kosher statement and nothing else. It is not a food-safety, hygiene, allergen, “free-from”, organic or quality attestation, and not a halal one. An allergen-validated dairy-free line can be halachically dairy.
At this issue the offered scope is limited to pareve and dairy products of low kashrut risk.
We do not certify slaughter, meat or poultry processing; wine, grape juice or grape derivatives; food service, catering, retail premises or any establishment; and we do not certify persons or management systems. We do not issue Passover certificates — every standard certificate states on its face that it is not certified for Passover, and no letter or note converts one into the other.
Designations that require supervision of the production act itself — Cholov Yisroel, Pas Yisroel, Bishul Yisroel, Yoshon, Glatt, Beis Yosef — are defined in the scheme but are not offered. We decline what we are not staffed to supervise rather than take the fee.
Seven duties carry most of the weight. Each one is written out in full in EMET-R-01, and each rests on a clause of the certification agreement you accept before anything is certified.
Not only your ingredient statement. Every material that enters the product, touches it, or acts on it: minor ingredients, the carriers and solvents inside a purchased flavour or premix, processing aids that never appear on a label, release agents and lubricants, filter media and resins, steam and heat-transfer chemicals where they can reach product, rework of every origin, and packaging that can transfer something to the food.
Where an approval rests on another agency's letter, that letter must cover the exact producing plant, the exact item code and the exact status claimed, from an agency we accept, and it must be current. A letter naming the company but not the plant, or saying “kosher” where the recipe needs pareve, does not support an approval. An ingredient approved at one of your sites carries no status at another.
Lines, vessels and shared utilities each carry a kosher status. Whether a changeover restores pareve or merely cleans the line, and whether equipment needs kashering and by what method, is the Rav HaMachshir's determination on your specific equipment and its history of use — not something a sanitation record settles. What you provide is the facts he needs to make it.
Ingredient, supplier, formulation, processing aid, shared equipment, production method, place of manufacture, or packaging carrying the mark. Approval is never retrospective: product made after an unapproved change is outside your certification and the mark on it is unauthorised. If you are unsure whether a change matters, ask — asking costs nothing, not asking can cost the certificate.
Announced visits and unannounced ones, during production hours, without notice — at your own plant and at any site producing for you. Refusing entry, delaying it or obstructing the work is itself grounds for suspension. We may take samples at the plant. How often we come is a risk decision and is never disclosed.
What ran, in what order, on what line, with what materials, and what happened between incompatible runs — together with your cleaning and kashering records, your label approvals, and your own record of kosher complaints. They are read where they are kept: at your facility, at a visit.
Artwork is issued by us with the designation already drawn into it. You never add, move, substitute or typeset a letter beside the seal, and you never redraw the mark. Written approval comes before the print run, not after it.
The mark itself — every variant, what each one asserts, the two cuts, the minimum sizes, the clear space, and the eleven terms of the licence — is set out in full on the mark page. Holders receive the same rules as the mark usage guide, which forms part of the certification agreement.
This is the part most often got wrong, so it is stated plainly.
The certificate belongs to one holder, at one facility. If your product is made for you at somebody else’s plant, that plant is the facility, and everything we require has to be true there — including our right to walk in unannounced. You must secure that right in your own written arrangement with them before we can certify that production. Our contract is with you and with nobody else: if something fails at a site you do not own, we look to you.
Certification and the mark are not transferable. You cannot lend or extend them to a co-packer, a private-label customer, a repacker or a distributor — each needs its own written authorisation. Where a plant fills the same product for several brands, only the packs covered by a certificate may carry the mark.
At your request we can withhold a brand name, a product line, or the facility itself from the public register. We can never withhold the existence of a certificate, its number, holder, dates, current status, status history, or the reason recorded for a suspension or withdrawal.
A standard certification runs twelve months and is renewed. No renewal is issued while a finding at your facility is still open.
The public register, searched by certificate number, is the statement we stand behind — not the paper. Where a document in circulation and the register disagree, the register wins. Suspensions, withdrawals and the reasons recorded for them are published.
By correspondence with the office — email, or the contact form. There is no upload facility and no change-request screen: whatever a notification needs by way of documents comes to us as correspondence and is held in your file. Your portal is a place to read, not to send — your application’s progress, your certification and its status, and your artwork pack while the certificate is valid.
We do not consult. We will tell you what a requirement means, explain a finding, and give you our written interpretation of a requirement as it applies to your products. We will not design your process, write your specification or tell you how to close a gap — at any price. A body that designed your process could not then judge it independently.
We ask only about what bears on kosher status and nothing beyond it. A written quotation comes before any work starts, and the fee buys evaluation, never a certificate.
Everything above is a summary. The requirements themselves are published as EMET-R-01, revision 1 — nine sections covering scope, ingredients, the facility, production, private label and co-packing, labelling and the mark, Passover, what you must tell us and when, and what happens when certification stops. It carries an annex naming every requirement in it that no system of ours can check, so that nothing here is taken on trust that should not be.
It is not yet in force, and until it is we do not send it. A document carrying kashrut requirements comes into force on the approval of the Rav HaMachshir and not a day earlier, and nothing leaves this office for anyone outside it unless it is final and carries that approval. A draft circulating as though it were the rules is worse than no document at all — somebody would build a plant around it.
So this page is what is published for now, and it is a fair summary rather than a teaser: what binds a holder today is the certification agreement they accept, the recorded rulings of the Rav HaMachshir, and the conditions printed on their certificate. When he has approved EMET-R-01 it is issued under his name and sent to anyone who asks — a holder, an applicant, or a rabbinic authority deciding whether to rely on a certificate issued under it.
The scheme — the other half, what this body does rather than what you must meet — is in force, and its full text is sent on request. Write to [email protected].