How a certificate is earned

You give us the company and the facility, every product, and every raw material — including processing aids, release agents, carrier oils and enzymes — with the plant that actually produces each one, not the distributor who sells it. We sign a non-disclosure agreement first: formulas are trade secrets and we treat them as such.

This is where the real work is, and where most applications stall. Every raw material falls into one of three buckets: acceptable from any source; certified by an agency we accept — where we verify the letter covers the exact producing plant, the exact item code and the claimed status; or unacceptable, to be substituted or investigated at source.

The result is your approved-ingredient list. It is specific to your facility — the same ingredient can be approved at one plant and not at another — and nothing on it may be changed or substituted without our written approval first.

Flow diagrams before anyone travels: shared lines, hot versus cold processing, clean-in-place circuits, shared steam and condensate return, rework loops, tankers. Heat transfers kosher status, which is why a line schedule matters as much as an ingredient list.

We walk the flow of material: receiving — do the bags actually match the approved list — then storage and segregation, production against the declared process, shared equipment and changeover, clean-in-place versus kashering, steam and utilities, rework, the lab and pilot plant, and the label store.

One thing we teach every plant on day one: allergen control is not kashrut. An allergen-validated dairy-free line can be halachically dairy, and a “may contain milk” statement says nothing about kosher status.

Equipment that previously ran non-kosher or dairy product is cleaned, left idle, and then purged by the method matching how it was used — hagalah (boiling water), libun (direct heat) or irui (pouring). The protocol for each item is a rabbinic determination and is carried out with the mashgiach present.

The file goes to the certifying rabbi: certify, certify with conditions, or decline. The decision is rabbinic and is recorded with its author, its date and its conditions in our own words. Fees are agreed afterwards, never traded against the decision.

The agreement covers the fee, the right of unannounced access, your obligation to tell us before anything changes, and the licence to use the Emet mark — which is licensed, never sold, and revocable.

You receive the certificate, the exact marks your certificate authorises — and no others — and the usage guide. Every label bearing the mark is approved individually before it is printed. A dairy product carrying a pareve mark is simultaneously a kosher failure and an allergen incident; approval before print is what prevents it.

Visit frequency follows risk, and visits are unannounced as a matter of policy. New products, changed suppliers, construction, a change of ownership, a complaint or a previous finding all trigger more. Every routine visit includes reading the bags in your warehouse against your approved list.

Some statuses exist only when a supervisor is present for the run. We do not offer a designation we cannot staff.

Not a rubber stamp: every supplier letter is re-verified — an expired letter means the ingredient is no longer approved — the product list is reconciled against what you actually run, the year’s changes and findings are reviewed, and the plant is re-inspected. An open corrective action blocks renewal.

Findings are graded. Paperwork gaps get a corrective action. An unapproved ingredient or an unapproved label takes the affected products off the certificate. Anything critical — dairy sold as pareve, a non-kosher ingredient, refused access — is an immediate suspension, published to the register the same day, and either remediated or withdrawn.

Where mislabelled product has already reached trade, we publish a public alert naming the product and the error. Agencies that hide these are the ones you should worry about.