However, many items marked K-D have no dairy in them.  When they are
processed by machines which have at one time processed something with dairy
in them, they must be marked K-D even though they have no dairy.  The best
bet is to read the label.
 
Sherry
 
>Parve or Pareve is a kosher indicator.   Jews who keep kosher do not consume
>meat and milk in the same meal (and there are waiting times in between).
>Kosher products must thus indicate whether or not they contain any milk
>products, or meat products, or neither, in which case they may be eaten with
>anything.  The parve products are the ones containing neither milk nor meat.
>The kashrut definition of milk is a stringent one, which includes everything
>a milk-allergic person needs to avoid.
>
>Kosher products are labelled with a number of different symbols, indicating
>who supervised the determinitation of kashrut.  One of the most reliable is
>O-U, which is a U in a circle.  Unfortunately they don't always specify
>pareve explicitly, unless you might expect the product to contain milk or
>meat products.  Usually they will specify dairy with a small D beside the
>symbol, or meat with the word MEAT, unless it's obvious (i.e. cheese or
>chicken soup are not explicitly labled Dairy or MEAT).  So usually a plain
>O-U on a product means it's pareve.  Of course kosher meat products are also
>100% dairy-free (i.e. some of the Near East rice mixes).  Occaisionally
>you will see a Dairy mark on something where you don't recognize any dairy
>ingredients -- this occurs when the item is made on a line used for other
>dairy-containing products, or too close to a line used for other dairy
>products.
>
>For this reason kosher cookbooks can be a good source of dairy-free recipes,
>especially desserts (to be served after a meat meal).
>
>Some kosher marks are not considered reliable.  In particluar a plain K
>is not a supervised mark.  Others vary regionally.
>
>Hope this helps more than it adds to the confusion,
>--Robyn
>