Orthodox Union Kosher
Kosher Certification Agency
Orthodox Union Kosher, known as OU Kosher or OUK, is an American kosher certification agency based in New York City. It was founded in 1923 by Abraham Goldstein. It is the certification agency of about 70% of kosher food worldwide, and is the largest of the "Big Five" major certification agencies, which include OK, Kof-K, Star-K, and CRC.
Background
OU Kosher was founded in 1923 by East Prussian chemist Abraham Goldstein as the first independent kosher certification agency. Goldstein established the kosher certification program under the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. The certification's symbol – the letter "U" inside of the letter "O" – was first placed on Heinz's vegetarian baked beans, confirming that their food was certified kosher.
In 1950, Rabbi Alexander S. Rosenberg joined the OU Kosher Division as rabbinic administrator. In his 22 years with the division, Rosenberg helped increase the number of employed mashgichim, or kosher supervisors, within the OU Kosher Division from 184 to 750, which helped certify over 2,500 products for 475 companies. During his time leading the division, Rosenberg set reforms in place to decrease the amount of corruption and fraud in the kosher certification industry. He ensured that local rabbis working for the OU were conforming to the uniform standards set by the division, and prevented bribery between food companies and mashgichim.
In 2012, the OU released the OU Kosher app, which gave consumers easily accessible updates on certified OU Kosher products, including which products are kosher, lists of newly certified products, and updated on products that are no longer certified.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Orthodox Union Kosher” is kosher Certification Agency. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Orthodox, Union and Kosher, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q83425173. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 1950 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Orthodox Union Kosher” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.