Sugar cane is a tropical plant that grows up to 10-20 feet high and looks like a bamboo stalk. A stalk of sugar cane contains between 12 to 14 % of Sucrose (the chemical name for ordinary sugar). The process of producing sugar from the cane is done in two steps, first at a sugar mill, and then at a sugar refinery.

At the sugar mills (usually located near the cane fields), the canes are washed and cut into small pieces. Big rollers then press the juice out of the cut cane. The juice is then clarified, concentrated and crystallized and is ready for refinement.

Some hundred and fifty years ago, some European Jews discovered to their shock and amazement that in the new large industrial plants that were processing sugar, it was being ‘purified’ (‘refined’ sounds better) with the aid of, of all things, animal blood.

Whatever taste the dried bones might possibly leak into a food is certainly not 'a food taste'

The only ones that kept their heads were the Rabbinic Scholars. In a famous Responsa, the Tzemach Tzedek, the Lubavitcher Rebbe of that time, tackled the Halachic implications of this development. Backed with numerous sources, stating he following:

Since the animal by-product was only used for filtering purposes, and the final result meets the criteria that none of the animal by-product remains in the sugar, AND the entire process is done when the sugar and animal by-product are cold, then, ruled the Tzemach Tzedek, the blood filtration process would not make the sugar unkosher.

The same concept is applied with the current mode of refining. Dried animal bones, specifically the ones used today in sugar processing, have been treated chemically so that they are beyond a classification of what constitutes ‘animal bones’. (They are certainly closer to charcoal than to ‘animal bones’) As such, we are no longer concerned about their giving the sugar a flavor; whatever taste the dried bones might possibly leak into a food is certainly not ‘a food taste’. It is a ‘taste’ that not even a dog would enjoy. Furthermore, the fact is that it takes heat to transfer taste from one food to another, and this processing is done when the sugar is cold

Republished with permission from www.oukosher.org