Not So Kosher

Almost anything anyone buys at stores carries one of the above symbols or a variation, yet very few consumers know what the symbols mean. According to the largest kosher company in the United States, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, “over $150 billion of kosher certified products are consumed annually, and spending continues to rise dramatically” (Getting par. 1).
Why would companies go through the process of becoming Kosher? Here’s what the company thinks:
There is clear evidence that a kosher symbol boosts market share, that a kosher product can win more favorable shelf space, and that positioned next to a competing non-kosher brand, a kosher product will do better by 20%. This data has remained constant even in the smaller cities, far from heavier concentrations of kosher Jews. (Source: Integrated Marketing Communications.) …Most importantly, be sure that all your certified products, whether retail or industrial, feature the logo prominently on the label or packaging, as well as in your advertising. This will not only help your sales, but will also make your products easily identifiable as kosher by food industry personnel, kosher inspectors, and consumers throughout the world (Getting par. 3-5).
This may be true among Jews, but it seemed to both frighten and infuriate those who had never known about kosher symbols.
It is this knowledge that has and continues to fan the flame of conspiracy ideas. The Anti-Defamation League, a group that works to defend Israel and Jews, has a section on their website solely to what they call the “kosher tax myth.” They cite a 1975 study by New York Times that says that consumers pay less than 1% more money on kosher products than non-kosher products (ADL par. 6). The A.D.L. says that “the profit from these products goes, of course, to the companies that manufacture them and the stores that sell them, not to ‘the Jews’” (ADL par. 7). They then dedicate the majority of the page to saying that all information about a kosher tax scam is from Anti-Semites and therefore should be discarded.
When I googled “kosher tax,” I arrived at a website by a group called Aztlan that did seem to be Anti-Semitic. The author of the article described what seemed to be a common response to finding the symbols on everything:
On arriving at my residence, I immediately went to the pantry to verify that what I had just learned was actually true. Sure enough, most of the packaged and canned foods from major companies, like Proctor & Gamble and others, did have the (U), the (K) or other similar markings. The Arrowhead water bottle, the instant Folgers Coffee, the Kelloggs box, the Jiff Peanut Butter, the Pepper container, the Trader Joe's tea box and even the Glads plastic sandwich bags carton had the (U) or (K) mark on them (Cienfuegos par. 2).
Aztlan describes the “kosher tax scam” in detail:
I learned that major food companies throughout America actually pay a Jewish Tax amounting to hundreds of million of dollars per year in order to receive protection. This hidden tax gets passed, of course, to all non-Jewish consumers of the products. The scam is to coerce the companies to pay up or suffer the consequences of a Jewish boycott. … The amount of money that the non-Jewish consumer has paid the food companies to make up for the hidden Jewish Tax is unknown, but it is estimated to be in the billions since the scam first started. The Orthodox Jewish Councils as well as the food companies keep the amount of the fees very secret. The Jewish owned Wall Street Journal wrote about the problem many years ago, but they have stopped writing about it now (Cienfuegos pars. 4, 9).