Warning: Bigelow Teas and Dairy

[aprilp_katje]

The other day, I noticed that the packaging for my Bigelow decaf chai tea has the "kosher dairy" designation. I've been using this tea for a while, and somehow I hadn't noticed this. The ingredients are listed as "black tea, spices, natural flavors (soy lecithin)," so I was puzzled as to where the "dairy" designation would even come from. I went to Bigelow's website and sent in an e-mail asking about this. I just got this reply: You asked if about dairy in our teas.

There is no dairy in our teas. However, a flavor contained in some of
our teas, contains "butter esters", which do not contain any milk
proteins, but is a fatty acid or component of fat. However, the flavor
still needs to be classified as kosher dairy.

The teas which include this flavor are: Blueberry Harvest; Cherry
Vanilla; Eggnogg'n; French Vanilla Decaffeinated; French Vanilla; Spiced
Chai; Spiced Chai Decaffeinated; Vanilla Caramel; Vanilla Chai; Green
Chai and Green with Blueberry.

We hope this information is helpful to you.
Wait a minute, what? If "butter esters" are a fatty acid or component of milk fat, which I expect they must be to require the "kosher dairy" label, not to mention the word "butter" in the name, how on earth is that not an instance of their teas containing dairy?!?!?!?!

::falls off chair::