Jerusalem – Based on a petition from Israeli food manufacturer and ketchup competitor, Osem, the Health Ministry has ruled that the American-based H. J. Heinz Company must change its labeling to “Tomato Seasoning” for products sold in Israel.
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HAARETZ.com (http://bit.ly/1EfpLDZ) reports that Osem’s challenge stated that Heniz’s product does not sufficiently meet the Standards Institute of Israel’s guidelines for how much tomato paste a product must contain in order to qualify as ‘ketchup.’
The Ministry agreed and ruled that Heinz must now change its Hebrew labeling to read ‘Tomato Seasoning.’
However, Diplomat, the importer which handles Heinz products in Israel, will be filing its own petition asking that the Israeli definition of ketchup be changed to accommodate Heinz’s product.
According to sources, Diplomat’s petition has the backing of the Health Ministry’s food division to reduce the standard for tamato paste from 10% to 6%.
It doesn’t matter whether its 10 percent or 99 percent tomato paste. The Heinz ketchup doesn’t have Chassideshe hashgacha and without that gold standard of kashruth, the 99 percent of shomrei torah umitzos in EY will not use this product with the chulent and hot dogs.
Heniz’s? Tamato? Who checks these things, don’t you use a spell checker?
They’ll have to shmear him.
Hah, John Kerry, Israel gets its last licks in. Put that on your spaghetti and eat it.
seriously? wow thats bold..
Heinz is synonymous with ketchup. everything thing else is just imitation!
Call the Heinz ketchup what you want. There ain’t no Ketchup like it and Osem better figure out their formula.
At least they don’t consider it a vegetable like the school systems here in the US did.
They have nothing better to do than worry about the percentage of tomato there is in Heinz ketchup? I”m sorry, but Heinz means ketchup and it’s the only one I will buy (except on Pesach). Let Osem, Gefen, Lieber’s and those other companies come up with something that remotely tastes like Heinz.
That’s pretty comical. It is kind of disturbing to know the there is so little actual tomato in ketchup, but that’s the way it tastes best so u can’t say it’s not ketchup.
What a laugh. Looks like someone in Israel is bored in his office.