After their exodus from Egypt, Am Yisrael enjoyed miraculous manna from heaven for 40 years in the desert. Today, when we celebrate Pesach away from home, we often have access to fresh, frozen, or shelf-stable kosher food of the highest standards, with unprecedented ease. Much planning, effort and logistical know-how on the part of kosher food manufacturers and consumers make that possible.
Airlines, trains and even hotels frequently accommodate travelers’ requests for pre-ordered kosher meals. These meals are often produced at great distances and shipped far in advance. This is often true regarding meals for those who, unfortunately, will need to be in the hospital over Pesach.
While consumers should be especially cautious year-round when ordering, heating, and consuming these prepared meals, extra precautions are necessary during Pesach.
In the kosher foodservice business, as the Chanukah holiday concludes, many turn their attention to preparing food for the other eight-day holiday in the spring – Pesach. OU Kosher meals are prepared in dedicated warehouses under full-time Rabbinic supervision.
Before preparing OU Kosher for Passover meals, facilities undergo koshering procedures. These entail a shutdown of the sites, and the cleaning and sterilizing of equipment by specially trained individuals.
Certain pieces of equipment (i.e. commercial fryers, sheet pans) that cannot be properly koshered, are substituted with dedicated Passover replacements. Following these procedures, the premises remain “Passover-dedicated” for a number of weeks, or even months. Manufacturers often choose a slow season, such as mid-winter, to produce Kosher for Passover food products. Oftentimes, these warehouses revert back to nonPassover foodservice well before the holiday.
Kosher for Passover prepared meals must be clearly distinguishable from the non-Passover fare. As with all packaged products, to avoid consumer confusion, the Kosher for Passover marking must be obvious to both the vendor and the final consumer.
Whereas consumers decide which products to purchase for Pesach based on their recognition of products’ kosher for Passover status, in the case of prepared meals, it is often an airline, hospital or hotel middleman who purchases and provides the meal to you.
The consumer is therefore at the mercy of the middleman’s discretion. Accordingly, greater lead time and the ability to make specific requests as far in advance as possible increase the likelihood that a kosher for Passover meal will be obtained by the middleman. Remember that prepared meals (both regular and kosher for Passover) are often stored in freezers and pulled randomly without much thought given to Pesach’s strict halachic guidelines.
Note that while the packaging of prepared kosher meals is intended to be tamper-proof, packages are not bulletproof. As such, if, during handling, a hot tray becomes punctured, the puncture can materially affect the meal’s kosher status. This is all-themore sensitive on Pesach, when the rules of nullification (bitul 1:60) do not apply.
Even with all of our good intentions and pre-planning, mistakes in obtaining kosher for Passover meals can happen. It’s always a good idea to anticipate this possibility and bring along provisions from home in the event that things do not go as planned.
