Tablet K Cheese | Imamother

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Forum -> Judaism -> Halachic Questions and Discussions

Tablet K Cheese

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FranticFrummie

Tue, May 26 2009, 9:39 pm

Oh for the love of feta, why can't we eat it?

I have asked everyone I can think of, and I still can't get a straight answer. Responses vary between "Well, we just don't" to "They have different standards".

No one can tell me if the ingredients are treif, if they are processed on treif equipment, if the rabbis are involved in something scandalous, WHAT? It drives me crazy because it's SO affordable, and it's in all the grocery stores.

It's not CY, but if you hold by OUD then it should be OK. I just want to know WHY! Anyone have the scoop?

Tue, May 26 2009, 9:42 pm

What about the Tablet K fish sticks, what I wouldnt do to be able to buy fishsticks at a reasonable price at any supermarket.

mommalah

Tue, May 26 2009, 10:11 pm

JC wrote:

What about the Tablet K fish sticks, what I wouldnt do to be able to buy fishsticks at a reasonable price at any supermarket.

I accidentally bought Mrs. Pauls and some other brand that makes awesome fish sticks years back becasue I saw a tablet k "hashgacha" and just assumed it was okay. Eventualy I spoke to my brother who told meit's not agood hechsher. I should have known. They were excellent and reasonably priced.

Regarding feta cheese. Trader Joe's sells an Israeli feta cheese. It's awesome. I forget the brand but the hechsher is fine. Best feta ever!!

chanahlady

Mon, Oct 12 2009, 2:51 pm

I'm still not convinced that Tablet-K is a bad hechsher, but then again I haven't heard anything but rumors either. Someone told me it's because Tablet-K is such a small outfit, yet their hechsher is on cheeses all over the place. So how can they be everywhere at once? Hm.

tovasmom

Mon, Oct 12 2009, 2:56 pm

My dh, who worked his way through college and yeshiva doing hashgacha work, worked for the tablet k hashgacha for years and would not recommend relying on this hashgacha. Nuf said.

Barbara

Mon, Oct 12 2009, 3:20 pm

tovasmom wrote:

My dh, who worked his way through college and yeshiva doing hashgacha work, worked for the tablet k hashgacha for years and would not recommend relying on this hashgacha. Nuf said.

Why is that enough said? What problems did he encounter? What violations did he find, and how were they dealt with when your husband reported them (which I would assume that he did). How many years ago was this, which would affect the reliability of your information? How did he justify working for them for years if he didn't believe their certification to be valid? Wouldn't that constitute a major halachic violation on his part (leading people to believe that treif food was actually kosher by placing a hecksher on them)?

Specifically with respect to cheese products, given the fact that Tablet K does not allow the use of animal rennet, what problems are there with the product? AFAIK, Cabot (eg) makes no changes to its production or to its product when it does its annual OU run, but it does increase its price because of the cost of OU supervision.

We don't use this hecksher only because *others* don't use it, and we want people to eat in our home. Still, as many times as I've heard the question asked as to why its not recommended, all I've ever heard are whispers of *ohhh, shhhhhh, its not reliable; EVERYONE knows that*

Edit -- mea culpa. I just checked, and it appears that Cabot no longer uses Tablet K. They are quoted as saying that the *only* difference between Tablet K and OU is that OU visits more frequently -- not the requirements. Since most Cabot still isn't OU, I guess that most is now completely un-hechshered.

Last edited by Barbara on Mon, Oct 12 2009, 4:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

chavamom

Mon, Oct 12 2009, 3:23 pm

We looked into it at one point and were told that they don't or rarely provide direct supervision to their products after they decide it is kosher and that is the problem. That and that when people actually have gone to the facilities to check them out, they found gross problems in kashrus unaddressed.

AryehSimaRivka

Mon, Oct 12 2009, 4:03 pm

What I was told is that cheese products need to have a Jew adding the active ingrediant (like the veggie Rennet) in order for it to be kosher. It is a chumra from 1000s of years that basically everyone holds by.

tovasmom

Mon, Oct 12 2009, 5:16 pm

Barbara wrote:

tovasmom wrote:

My dh, who worked his way through college and yeshiva doing hashgacha work, worked for the tablet k hashgacha for years and would not recommend relying on this hashgacha. Nuf said.

The issue was explained to me as a lack of accountability -- no followup visits at plants, and certain Kulas which were relied upon in giving the hechsher which are not relied upon widespread. He worked as a mashgiach temidi for establishments in certain circumstances and certainly it was not a matter for him of violations going unpunished. More a lesser standard.

amother

Fri, Oct 30 2009, 11:19 am

[quote="mommalah"][quote="JC"]What about the Tablet K fish sticks, what I wouldnt do to be able to buy fishsticks at a reasonable price at any supermarket.[/quote]

I accidentally bought Mrs. Pauls and some other brand that makes awesome fish sticks years back becasue I saw a tablet k "hashgacha" and just assumed it was okay. Eventualy I spoke to my brother who told meit's not agood hechsher. I should have known. They were excellent and reasonably priced.

Regarding feta cheese. Trader Joe's sells an Israeli feta cheese. It's awesome. I forget the brand but the hechsher is fine. Best feta ever!![/quote]

the feta at Trader Joe's is OU and is from Israel. they have a mozzarella that is "tablet K"

Perhaps the cheese is w/ tablet K? fishsticks for me would be more problematic: oil source and assurance that only kosher fish is used. It is a matter of throughness of supervision. If someone eats chalav stam, the issue with cheese [u]in the US[/u] is the rennet. (In US rabbanim permit chalav stam because, the definition of "milk" is bovine milk.

who is tablet K?

amother

Fri, Oct 30 2009, 11:19 am

amother

Sun, Jan 10 2010, 10:39 am

I used Tablet K cheese -- are all my dishes treyfe now? embarrassed

levial

Sun, Jan 10 2010, 10:53 am

FYI the trader joes from Israel is great, and it's not just O-u, it's marked cholov israel (probably since it's made in Israel it's easier not to find cholov stam...)

saw50st8

Sun, Jan 10 2010, 11:02 am

We just asked our Rav about Tablet K who said its unreliable. Take that for what its worth but we don't eat there.

amother

Sun, Jan 10 2010, 12:10 pm

My non frum MIL was once so excited that she found us kosher cheese in the supermarket near her. Of course it had tablet k. I asked my brother who is a modern orthodox shul rabbi in the US and he extremely emphatically did not let us use it. Neither he nor we are makpid on chalav yisrael

melbee

Tue, Feb 02 2010, 11:53 pm

DH works in a cheese production plant and I asked him about this tablet K issue. The factory he works in makes both kosher and non-kosher cheese, and sends to one of the companies that then puts their own labels on the cheese. Labels that have the tablet k insignia. He says the cheese they are sending to this company is "patently non-kosher", and yet they are putting a hechsher on it despite.

He also says that to his knowledge tablet k is a conservative organization that merely queries the company they are certifying about what goes into the products, but do no physical checking to make sure kosher standards are upheld.

amother

Tue, Feb 02 2010, 11:58 pm

Which one is tablet k? Is that the one with the triangle around the k?

nylon

Wed, Feb 03 2010, 12:04 am

levial wrote:

FYI the trader joes from Israel is great, and it's not just O-u, it's marked cholov israel (probably since it's made in Israel it's easier not to find cholov stam...)

CY is extremely common for cheese (rennet based--not cottage, cream, etc cheeses) even in the US. it seems that once you're going to the trouble of making specifically kosher cheese, you might as well get the whole market and make it CY. A bit like glatt kosher meat, I guess.

Tablet-K is not Conservative, as such--I believe Rabbi Saffra came from YU, in fact. It doesn't have official backing from the Conservative movement or anything like that. But it does not keep mainstream Orthodox standards in all respects. I know of too many Tablet-K establishments with potential kashrut problems.

amother

Wed, Oct 23 2013, 9:46 am

amother wrote:

Which one is tablet k? Is that the one with the triangle around the k?

no ------

srbmom

Wed, Oct 23 2013, 9:53 am

Trader Joes also has some sort of marinated mozzarella (not sure if I'm remembering exactly what it's called) that does have a an OUD on it. I have never tried it though

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