02-25-2015 Kosher Fraud

hello and welcome to Stark's monthly webinar we're here on the last Wednesday of every month at the Stark headquarters in Baltimore Maryland I'm Rabbi s Goldberg your host and today we're joined by Rabbi Michelle thank you for coming goldber pleasure to be here thank you R Michelle is the director of many of our overseas operations especially in Asia Pacific uh many many hundreds of companies that we have overseas and he does deal with some of the fraud issues that we're going to discuss today I invite you to chat with us on the bottom of your screen uh on the bottom left of your screen we we love to answer your questions or your concerns comments and we'll try to get to them as many of them as soon as possible uh these these sessions are recorded and if you're interested in seeing some of our past sessions like for instance the last one we had with Rabbi Frankl on storm weather and Hala I think that we're almost finishing the storms at least here for the season we sure hope so we hope so right um but there's end this hurricane season but um that is up on our our our our kosher classes website our Vimeo and and YouTube web uh channels so if you want to look for them let's say you you you can search for Vimeo Stark kosher and you will find our archived classes from past years if you want to join us by phone right now call 218 895-1203 that's 218- 895-1203 passcode 2020 and if you want to be alerted about the classes every month what the topic is and what time and so on usually is the last Wednesday of the month at noon but you can send us an email at info stark. RG or call us 41484 4110 we love to hear from you okay R Michelle let's begin with this topic of kosher uh fraud fraud fraud in the kosher Marketplace so because it is uh it is upcoming Passover PES is upon us I put together some some uh some Passover issues okay here's one Michelle on to show okay let's see if that will come up yeah okay as you can see I removed the name of the product and the certifications because our job is not to impune any other certification that's not what we're trying to do just trying to inform so I I blocked out the details um so here we have an interesting uh a product it's some some B Bakery product which is certainly ktic right it's not permitted to be eaten on on Passover and you see on in the left of your screen left side uh you see that it says AR P special which means it's uh sold before before Passover and it's uh it's a it's a it's on sale but then on the right side it says baked after PES 2014 so which is it was it baked before well they're trying to give you the best of both worlds I see don't see how the consumer could go wrong except for the fact that it just doesn't make sense doesn't make any sense now why would you want just to explain why would you want something baked after Passover there is a problem of and um Passover we do not want to haveit uh the 11 product which was owned by a Jew over Passover that that is prohibited after Passover uh that that prohibition according to how we follow the the the uh opinion that we follow is aab prohibition but nevertheless it is prohibited now if you would have something which was uh only prepared after Passover and only made after Passover the Assumption being that before PES P it was not and therefore you have no question of it possibly being getting into that transgression of being in a Jew's possession over Passover so most places would sell their their their humet to the non-jew but a person who wants to be strict and not rely on that would be looking for the sticker on the right um not that we require it or it's not uh it's a stringency that some people have but certainly this is something somebody made a mistake right how can you how can it be both baked before Passover and after Passover that's imposs possible so somebody is not minding the store over here and uh this is something if you'd see this obviously You' see that somebody's uh not being 100% um on over the board uh in as far as how they're doing uh marketing their product right I know over the years we've had situations where we've been told that uh people have had products that they have stickers ready before Passover like in this case where it says that it's baked after Passover so that the consumer make them feel very happy that it was made after Passover but you know that's not in itself it could be honest and still been be inaccurate or misleading because uh when a consumer is looking for something that's baked after pesak he's looking for something that was not so if they had the dough made before Passover Passover and then they left the dough over Passover and they sold it and then they baked they baked it after Passover so they're telling you the truth they baked it after Passover but you really are not gaining anything because it was in possession of somebody over Passover as a as hum so that's true so if you see this kind of sticker and and you know really stickers are not really uh you have to take them very carefully because anybody can put a sticker on we don't know if this how this could have happened the store owner told his workers to put the sticker on and and the worker made a mistake you know that would be you know to to to uh judge the the benefit of the doubt maybe the workers made a mistake or you want know that the agency that's certifying is is taking responsibility so if you see stickers on a product that raise some sort of question you really should get in touch with the agent agency to say are you taking responsibility for the the for the state that's right reab Goldberg and you know another situation since you're bringing up the topic of of stickers is uh generally speaking if you have any product that uh um I deal mostly with commercial items but if you let's say have a commercial item coming in and it just has a sticker with a star k on it or any other kosher symbol um a sticker alone doesn't mean anything because nobody's really taking responsibility for it nobody's really showing you that it's my company and I have a coach symbol to us it means a lot more if you have a company name with the kosher symbol than that's saying that I am the manufactor and this is my coacher organization and there's some sort of responsibility more legal resp there's a way of tracking it there's a way for the consumer or for another kosher organization to go and look at the product and say well this is uh xyz's product manufactured X at this and this place and it has a kosher symbol so I have something to uh to to associate to but just a s just a symbol on a just plain sticker that could put on by anybody okay so let's take a look at something else here since it's was still uh in the past Passover mode as a matter of fact I spent the morning a lot of portion of my morning going over our Passover list our PES list because we are heavy into PES as a matter of fact we're almost finished we're moving on to Shu already here because we we have to work ahead okay this is a uh a tuna fish sandwich served on Delta um uh you know you see it says keep frozen it's a kosher tuna fish sandwich you can see on the top it says glot kosher which really doesn't apply to tuna fish but okay that's a secondary issue uh and this is fine this would be perfect except that it was served on on Passover so uh it was served to the rabbi who was on the flight on the intermedi days of Passover now you could say that that's Delta's fault right I mean that's that that itself would would not necessarily that's something that the consumer has to obviously be aware of uh when he's ordering uh you know you have to be careful aine the airline is not going to have the airline doesn't have any idea of what what they should they're just no coar however if you look over here on this again I tried to block out everything this is the actual tuna sandwich and it says over here I'm showing you it says kosher for Passover and you can see that this this bread is certainly not the kosher for Passover so it's not only the airline that served it mistakenly but it was actually marked as kosher for Passover now look look um nobody's perfect and these things these things can happen but it's it is a good idea for the consumer to be aware that these things he has to be on top of it if you get a tuna sandwich that says Kosh Passover you should question that's that's a very obvious question right but there are other things that not so obvious that you should also question I think just generally speaking uh the the main thing that we want to get across to Consumers is consumer beware when you see something that looks a bit odd as because you don't know if you stumbled on to something or not and it's always safe better safe than sorry especially when you're dealing with these type of things something that looks unfamiliar or something that looks a little bit odd especially with a symbol on a packaging or uh we get consumer calls all the time asking about it and uh sometimes they do catch something which is uh not authorized and it's it's always worthwhile if you see something that looks a little suspicious check it out it's it's worth worth the ask here's something I could not get it in the right um uh um orientation but this is like a cart at a stand and um you can see some of the kosher tape here this is actually star kosher tape like taped on somewhere on the stand and it was not a kosher event um so the person who sent us this was at the was at the stand and he was a kosher consumer he said what does this take doing here um and we immediately got in touch with the vendor what had happened was that the card had been used previously for a kosher event and the tape was neglected to remove the tape at the end which should not should not happen but again you go into a a a a vendor and you see some tape on a on a cart that should not indicate to you that everything here is kosher it's a little that brings us to something that Rabbi Hinman our Rabbi always speaks about uh when becomes Passover time that when you're going through the Passover aisle in the uh in the uh Supermarket make sure that what on the aisle is for sure for Passover because sometimes you'll have one consumer picking up uh something which is not for Passover in one aisle and then they'll walk through the Passover aisle and see same thing for Passover they'll take it out of their cart and put it on the shelf and take the Passover item and then somebody else unsuspecting is going to come by and pick up the n nonp Passover item which may be similar and uh then you can have a problem I once had a um I once saw an alert that there was uh they were Tyson chickens which are assuredly non- Kosher and they had um a kosher symbol on them a a reliable kosher symbol on them and the question was how did that happen well it happened because it was part of the date code it looked you know the people making up the DAT codes just took these symbols and they then meant something they didn't even realize it was a kosher symbol and they put it so imagine you're walking down in Costco and you see these kosher chickens for 59 cents a pound and it has a kosher symbol on it you know a person you have to have some sense of of what is supposed to be out there you know that's that's that that's a mistake but again somebody could have fallen for it another issue that we don't have so much with the star uh because we have different symbols for dairy and Par but a lot of many of the agencies they have the regular symbol and they just put a d next to it because there are so many products out there hundreds of thousands it's not been possible to always guarantee that the D will show up on the uh on the dairy uh product and there are situations also with when there are minor formulation changes to different products uh especially things like candy and snack food where uh slight variation could change the designation from par of to Dairy and sometimes those things go into fruition before or somebody uses the wrong packaging and something get get out there before it's really caught the agencies try to be careful but it's just it's just it's everybody is human that's the bottom line so if you see something that might be Dairy it behooves you to read the ingredients and see is there anything really dairy in here and uh and then you can be you can be assured um okay so let's let's um let's close that let's move on now you might think that in Israel um that it might be you know people often think that in ER the uh the you know Kus is is is on a much higher level it's sometimes true but sometimes not for instance this is a a uh a document from the fraud agency in Israel under the raban and uh it it it Del Ates a 20 ton find of non properly labeled products that they they did they did a uh search and they found that they would so it it you know it happens in Israel too um we don't have that much knowledge as much knowledge about Israel Israeli products but all the products you see here these are all fraud these are not correct correctly labeled well it's unfortunate that where you have a larger market and you have more room for people to try to take take advantage to make a quick buck and uh you figure that an Israeli Market is a you know fair game for for fraudulent situations because of that um similar to uh what would be in a more populous culture uh concentrated area right so so you be have to be careful in n as well let's take some of these comments that we have here hold on a second what I'm going to do here is close this Michelle and let's bring up the chat uh let's make a bigger window over here let's see okay um let's sck some of these okay EG says what about stickers on salad bags so in in in I think in the New York Market it's more common right that you find a sticker we were talking about stickers before they they slap a sticker on when we authorize a sticker there are situations that we do authorize stickers we authorize stickers with our symbol if the manufacturer's name is also on the sticker as well because that way somebody is taking some sort of respons responsibility to for for it I think those we haven't heard that there are any uh um real concerns about if those those bag salad we have to understand that we're balancing commercial interests with kosher interests and uh if you have somebody who is limited in their purchasing power they don't have the ability necessarily to uh invest in packaging which would be the ideal situation but uh if you have such situations they would you know the much cheaper option is to use the sticker we don't encourage stickers but we understand that there are situations where it is necessary and like I said we would want that the sticker not to just have a kosher symbol on it but it should have the manufacturer's name or somebody distributor's name name with the coach's symbol so that there's some way of following up their name their address their phone number that all those things are important things that we would want there Moshe ask what is the consequence of a company that puts on a fake kosher symbol um okay uh star goes after them we uh we uh I know some of the other organizations have full-time lawyers just uh just for that purpose there aren't that many fraudulent star Cades that you would see in the marketplace it's it's kind of a rare thing it's not it does happen it happens sometimes I think mislabeling is far more common than somebody intentionally mean mislabeling making a mistake making a mistake okay but that doesn't help the consumer because bottom line it's not it's not Kosher um we we will We Will We Will approach the manufacturer we'll send them a letter we'll we'll give them a phone call we'll um if necessary we'll contact the uh the government agencies the New York state agency uh the agricultural agency and New York state has a fraud department New York State and New Jersey because of their Jewish um constituency do have an apparatus where you can go at them more legally um and and your case is much stronger in those areas then it would be an outlying area right so if a product's being sold there and they get a call from the New York State um fraud department they usually respond generally speaking any manufacturer really does not want bad press and uh when you bring it to their attention most cases they they will uh do what they can to right so sometimes we've had we've had recall many we've had some recalls we we force them to recall it off the shelves where you know to identify where it's been sold we try to alert the public you know but I I I one thing I want to say Michelle is that Hally speaking a person is allowed to assume that the products that are that are showing a certification are actually certified it's the person the the percentage of mislabeling fraud is is fraction of 1% it's very very small logically a person there's a there's a certification there's an Aus a a documentation there that is kosher I think generally the consumer can be pretty confident but um I think if if like I I believe we had a conversation before there are newsletters that are put out by different local agencies uh I believe uh in different outling cities they have different uh newsletters we have newsl I mean consumer should sign up uh for for alerts we have star alerts the U has alerts many agencies have alerts and it's worthwhile to sign up for them we got a uh an email previously um uh he says it's a wonderful thing I that sometimes I get an email stating that although some product has a heure on it it it has really no it's no not really certified it may not even be kosher however when I go shopping a while later I do not not remember the name or the product uh now I should really keep a list but I don't uh so he wants to know what he could uh what he could do could we have an alphabetical list of of fraudulent ashas um you know I I don't see that the person is required to walk into a supermarket checking his his his you know his list for for what's what's fraudulent but if there's a new product that he hasn't seen before something seems odd to him uh I think that's sufficient I think it would be sufficient just to keep on top of the emails and if you don't remember you know I I don't think a person is really obligated to go to the N degree uh to to take care of this issue which is not very common in the first place Arlene Abe says that the CRC has our uh same policy that we don't normally allow stickers unless they have the name of the company Arlene says is there a difference between starc dried fruits with a Passover sticker and without uh yeah without it wouldn't I mean without it's certainly not kosher for Passover well we're not taking responsibility to say that it's kosher for Passover there's no sticker on there um I think if a person has a question about such a product that does not have a a Passover certification and they do not have available uh for with Passover certification it's worth a call to the office and maybe they can speak to the rabbi in charge they might have that specific information okay Dove says in today's day and age there are a number of food items like Bagels crackers that have made Kosher for PES that would have been Unthinkable a number of years ago so your tuna sandwich is not so obviously Kitz um that is true you could have a bagel that could not beit however in this case it was really kit we checked it out with the certifier because it was it was an issue and he apologized for the mistake and it's a very reputable certifier and he just said you know he's going to do better through the CRA slip through the cracks he's going to do better um and um yeah it was really it was really and I hope that nobody really ate it okay let's see what else we have over here do you have any suggestions how a consumer can detect fraud I mean this is what we've been talking about that's we're trying to say be aware get the alerts try to look at the product if something seems a to you if the symbol seems a little funny sometimes the symbol is not in the right doesn't look right it's not in in in the right for instance we once had a a wine that uh had a star k right on the front a big star k and um and we asked the company what do you it's not a code we don't certify your company what are you doing they said well that's that's just uh the name of of the product I think it was the product started with a K so they put it into a star the products that started with an S they put it an S whatever letter it was okay so you know but let's look at it from the consumer's perspective he goes into the story sees a big big star on the bottle of wine in the front Okay well if you've been around then then you know that usually wines will say the certification will be on the back usually and they will say also um it will say if it's k koser for Passover which it usually is it' be some indication other than just the symbol and the symbol is not usually this big star k like prominent like that in on the bottle so something about that looks funny it looks odd and that's something that you should question um in that particular case I don't remember how we resolved it we can't I believe the company stop that they they stop okay we can't see legally we're not always able to stop companies it depends on the situation we have now recently our case is much greater than the United States where there's an awareness of the issue the United States be in another country in the world there is a a a DVD game manufacturer who is now using a star K on U on their products on their DVD games which are not certainly not certified by by Stark in any any fashion and um we contacted them and they had their lawyers uh look at look at the uh at the issue and they they they they uh came back to us that our symbol is is not um actually registered with reference to DVD products that they they have a right they felt they had a right to do it and it was very difficult for us to challenge that because we are actually actually a food certifying agency uh so not always can we use the law to uh to get what we defend us in this situation or the our consumers okay um Yuda says in Canada heers have a number that identifies each unique product this makes it easy to identify and talk about a product why did us heers not have such numbers I believe some of the US do we don't we do not that's true but I believe that some of the US do in fact I had a conversation with one of the organizations uh on Monday and they were explaining how their um tracking system works with the numbers it's it's a unique it's a company it's a company it's a compan generated it's a generated by the by the organization but for each product has a number or each some of them do by products some do by manufacturer and therefore it adds an extra layer of security to uh to know which uh company it's coming from so that they can track it and which is helpful why don't we do that that's uh that's something we have to bring up to our management and we can discuss Arlene says that k.com has a searchable list of alerts so she collects all of them over there and uh you can go look at on k.com for a list of alerts star also does uh star also does okay yes we do too um Abe says CRC does use ID numbers with their logos so okay that's an extra extra protection okay let's talk a little bit about uh your area Rabbi Rabbi Michelle which is from the manufacturer's perspective um so let's bring up some let me change around the screen here for a second let's bring up some of these let see how we do this make this small oops okay let's want to bring up the screen again with the um okay well we're bringing up some uh letters of certific which are which a consumer would not necessarily see well the consumer primarily is going to see the symbol like we mentioned before if you buy go into a store if you go into a dollar store or one of these something that may have Odd Lots or seconds or something like that and you see a kosher symbol on something and it lists uh something that may be questionable if it's got the gelon in there or something like that and it's made in China then you uh have reason to be very suspicious as to whether or not that's an authorized label and it's worthwhile contacting the organization right so but these letters that we I'm going to show you here these are letters that every agency issues for uh inter agency recognition so you want to explain what this what this well if you would let's say be a manufacturer or let's say You' be a distributor of kosher product you wouldn't just uh take in product you would ask the manufacturer your supplier for their what's called koser letter certification and uh that loc as we call it is uh letter of of Co of certification that is to verify that the facility is is kosher and the product is kosher um so if you are receiving product you would want to verify that the product agrees to the terms and the uh stipulations that are listed on one of these documents if you take a look at that document there so you'll see that it lists the name of the manufacturer as being koshered and what's interesting on that one there in the uh that one's Product of China and you see that it noted it lists also what's called the ciq number I've been told that those are being phased out but as long as they're there they're very helpful to us a ciq number is a government decide number that is designated for that facility so you would more or less be guaranteed that that product was manufactured at this facility if the inkjet on the on the can indicates that code now what's wrong with this letter was uh that somebody went ahead and updated the certificate on their own meaning to say that uh the you'll notice that it says that it's certified through May 31st 2012 when in fact uh the issuance state was in May 2011 the star does not issue letters for more than one year and uh I believe therefore that we figured out that this letter was uh updated by somebody other than this AR K which they wanted to Market it illegally this letter you can see uh over here on top it's a little bit blurry but uh somebody this is the advantage of using a Hebrew date on the on the letters this letter was issued on 32 tamuz 5776 so that would be next year 32 32 they're looking forward towards the future right then adding adding some uh some dates to our months as well they in China they can do anything well you can have a longer days there you know they have longer days okay so uh clearly this was a you know this was this was obviously fraud now this is really the often times you can take a look at one of these letters and you can see that the type set is different than our stand here right here you can see the typ set was just it was just typed in in a different way when people have computers nowadays is you can do cutting and pasting and unfortunately sometimes you'll have somebody doing a cutting and pasting sometimes they do better jobs than others this one was rather poor and rather obvious to this is all from the old system now nowadays mostly everything we we're going to talk to R he in a minute about the electronic uh communication between the agencies this was like in the olden days when you would have you would get a letter and you'd have to sort of look at it and sort of figure out was it correct is it leg or not we used to have a coding system system as well I don't know if that pulls up you can scroll down there you go so we used to have a barcode system barod system U to try to act as another layer of security um it's been phased out to an extent now but that was the system that we had going back there even without this even without getting into the electronic uh inter agency things that re Heber is going to discuss most of our koser certificates are posted online and uh people who are getting product Industrial or sometimes even consumer can often times go online to the Stark website and then uh find the certified companies and they can see a copy of the kosher certificate online to verify that it uh that it uh meets the standards or meets the criteria of the kosher certificate it's important for people to get to look at those koser certificates especially in industrial settings because there are conditions that are listed um under the uh under which the certification is given and often times those uh those conditions are not met and if they're not met then it's really not a certified product okay so this is an example um do you remember what was wrong with this one um well you can see again over here that this letter was uh was not complete oh this is actually the second page of a letter so the date I don't think the date matches up yeah so you know the Hebrew date that was an addition we did a number of years ago and that was very uh very helpful very helpful because they you know often times often times people who are trying to forge a certificate are not U well versed on the Hebrew calendar so uh that that is helpful for us helpful for other organizations I I think the majority of fraudulent letters of certification that we have that we get are really caught by are friends that are at the other kosher organizations where they'll have somebody out in the field who's receiving product and they'll see the kosher certificate that's being presented them by the seller distributor whoever it may be and the uh the letter does not seem to um it doesn't make sense doesn't doesn't doesn't meet the criteria or or it just doesn't look right what happens what happens when we find a company like overseas that is that you know produces one of these fraudulent letters what what is the process well generally speaking a company like that would lose their certification if they are certified if they're a non-certified company we do put out alerts uh and Not only would they lose the certification but don't we have agreements with the other agencies we have agreements with the other agencies they would not under in in Asia in China we have an agreement with the other major agencies whereby that if there is a company that is caught doing fraudulent work they will not pick it up they will be uh they will not be certified by anybody um until something can be worked out with regard to uh to verify you know what really took place and uh so that we should be sure because how can you trust a company that is not uh that is not being straightforward with you right so the incent the incentive for a company not to cheat is that they'll lose their business lose a lot of their business they will lose they and sometimes they go they could go out they'll be yes and we've had such situations where companies have come to us that they're they cannot survive now and uh it's unfortunate but uh there's little we can do if a company uh tough luck they should they should have thought of that before right that's okay Michelle thank you for joining us my pleasure best thank you we're going to speak with RAB Heber right now thank you RAB Heber for joining us good afternoon thank you for having me on so we were talking about the uh these kosher letters that are inter agency mostly and uh we want to ask you to disc describe the the computer system and what is the system for sharing information how does that protect us protect the US and the consumers from fraud sure so uh the starc is part of the ukd which is the universal conscious database which so here's the for instance has a ukd number each each each product has a ukd number correct so right so that number what happens is in the olden days before the ukd if a company was issued a k koser letter so that letter was presented to another agency so just for example if there was a fraudulent letter um company received that letter and fraudulent could be several ways one is they could just put their name they could white out let's say the top of the letter put their company name in um other ways were to change the date let's say a company lost C we had some agency we had some exam let's say a company lost their certification or they just didn't they they didn't continue because they decided for whatever reason they let us know that you know thank you very much but we know we no longer need certif ification and they would actually change the date on the top of the letter um those were hard to detect very often conscious agencies played a little bit detective um and they would be able to tell what one one way is we have Hebrew dates on the letter and someone who's who is astute would see let's say January 11th uh on a letter and it would say Thomas or something because they they got the Hebrew and English date mixed up but again that took an astute person on the other end seeing that letter it's important to note also um just the consumers consumers are used to seeing symbols on products uh agenes know products or kosher before they see those symbols they know through the letter of certification because when we're approving products we we will ask other company or our companies for documentation that a particular product or ingredient is kosher and that tells us now we can approve the formulation of course then has to go to the factory and determine that they're buying it from the supplier sometimes ingredients don't even need a symbol all consumer products require symbols but not all Industrial Products require symbols well that's true in the United States but if you go over you know to Europe they don't all have the retail products don't necessarily have symbols there okay right that's true but they the what's it the the really kosher food guide in in England what they I think that might work more of just they've approved it I don't even know if they're certifying it sometimes they actually go and they they visit the plant or or they have various pieces of information but anyway the bottom line is that is that um this this letter is really the critical point between agencies of knowing how a product is that a certain product is kosher at that point you now the product is kusher you could you could certify that product or at least making pending until your Mash goes but it's the first important step to certifying the product then M goes in and verifies everything is accurate anyway with the ukd now what happens is that when when we receive let's say something from a different agency who is part of the ukd the the circle for example the K are are also founding Partners in in this uh Venture um we will take this kosher letter and an entry it into our database we will type in the ukd number which will come up uh typically on on our screen um the the person then selects that ingredient and puts it in if that ingredient is not there um it could it could be several reasons why a particular ingredient is not there um and and sometimes that could be indicative of a problem therefore of further research is necessary so then we go to the agency and say is this really certified by you correct correct now there are certain products that are proprietary that aren't on so and that's being you know worked on that whole project but technically when something is is outdated in the ukd very outdated it just it's indicative of of of an issue and that is able to be researched so instead of spending so much time looking at all these letters that we have so the computer does it most of the work or much of the work right the computer will know let's say for instance since we have a a product that we desertify right this is a good example right we we have a letter out there that says that this product is kosher so the other agencies think it's kosher but now we decertified it because for whatever reason correct off the certification they we found them they don't want to be certified they they we Dr Dro we terminated them because they were doing something wrong so now how does the other agency know right so the olden days that letter was still out there we could have a letter availed through December 31st 2015 we now desertify that product um it was Impractical there's so many products that are shared back and forth between companies I meaning in factories that are using ingredients to all of a sudden send out a notice every day you know when someone actually was terminated a notice would go out saying this company's terminated there were violations Etc but just a regular company that said I don't want this product certified anymore for whatever reason it was too complicated to notify it's not possible this is so much so much Commerce back and forth notify every time in a process product falls off we're going to send the other agencies hundreds of products or would be changed so who's going to sit and and go through it do we have do do we have that is this affect us or not now with ukd what happens is we daily receive a report of every ingredient that is in our system that was certified yesterday and today is no longer certified or had some other change it's no longer question of a Passover it went from power of to Dairy something that would impact upon us and somebody in our office actually tracks down that product to see why is it no longer certified what is the issue um you know what's the problem and if there is a problem then we have to then go to our factories and and tell them this ingredient is no longer certified it needs to you know can no longer be used constantly uh we're updating our our our systems every every night and and the pro and the protocols and the you know using the technology really to to do the best job that we possibly can um I should also note yeah goad that it got it's a little bit easier because we you know koser letters expire every year um if someone else some other agency is certifying a product how do we know it's updated agencies certify every year that's a time to review in case there's issues it's a time sometimes companies get terminated um well not often but at least it's the jump off so so pretty much standard Cal letters are valid for a year when they expire we need to make sure they're updated so we used to ask our companies for U updated CER letters and you know if a company has 300 greting right they going have a ton of c letters now it's more it's automated as soon as it's updated in the other system we know it's we have some questions here if you see the these numbers here these this ukd number right what can a consumer do with it is there a way he can can't you go on our website and and put in the ukd number and see what it is temp unavailable well not not currently our you cannot you could you canot check that by ukd number you could check kosal letters are on our website cannot at this point you can look at the the whole company letter to see if it's you'll see that ukd number I see on there there's some discussion here whether not this is public information or not I guess I'll leave that for them to decide here uh someone is saying here that some of it is op is is is is open to the public but certain I will point out I should I should note that the the agreement amongst agencies was that s ukd once once an agency shares with us their information of their regular companies and we do have different levels and this is worked out amongst agencies certain things might be more proprietary and enough for the public consumption but technically speaking when we share our um product products with another company another agency they then could do whatever they want with it so if they choose to publicize the ukd they have the right to do that public information but it becomes public information at that point our information is public it's on our website um but therefore that same public information ends up in the ukd and there are agencies who have you know chosen the public sites of ukd to the general public Jeff wants to bring us to another topic about about Holograms that some companies are using Holograms um as part of their label design now we Stark does have uh Holograms that we use for kosher control in in unlimited circumstances uh where it would be practical to put a star hologram let's say on meat packages or chicken packages or very delicate it delicate items we don't it's not used um system wi yeah it's not used system wide but it is it is another tool in in the tool boox um I saw here that uh one of one of the listeners was saying Zev was saying that the same problem of frenal letters also applies to Seda certificates that they go around collecting you know you could have a fraud General certificate but I want to say I think in Baltimore I think Oran has has uh solve that one um he was one of the first if not the first to come out with the with the with the letters that give people confidence that that the those collecting are legitimate and uh it'sin it's it's I I actually I used to do it you used to do it too right we used to work for behind I visited you when you work for his office and we used to make up some of those letters in the sh the sh office in the sh office right behind is the the r of Thea here and um it's it was a very sophisticated remains a very sophisticated system for each letter there's a there's a a uh laminated and there's a picture on it and also there's time coded sticker that means that after a certain amount of days that sticker turns a different color so he so we know that it's it's not going to be it's not valid for the certificat is are valid for 10 days where did get that idea from he once went to a factory to a facility a factory and they gave him you know that story he gave they gave him a uh a sticker with his name on it and then he took he took it home and he saw that after a couple days it turned colors because they don't want to give people access to their facility forever so he got the idea to use that on the ster certificates and um I don't think we've ever had any any any concern about those certificates being fraud fraudulent because it's it's really sophisticated system um okay re is there anything else you want to finish off with or we we gave I think we covered it uh decently um I want to thank everybody for joining us and uh the next the next uh session will be God willing uh the week of the last week of next month uh which is right before PES right undoubtedly the topic will be PES undoubtedly we will be discussing Passover issues and uh and tuna sandwiches on airplanes on Passover well we already covered that one uh we invite you to call us 41484 4110 with any concerns or email info stark. org if there's questions here that we didn't answer or You' like have other questions about about kosas um and the archive should be up on our Vimeo and YouTube and kosher classes uh web websites uh within a couple of days thanks very much for joining us thank you take care have a have a happy porm be well