Dairy Equipment

I’m confused about why certain products are certified “D” or “DE” when I don’t see any dairy ingredients in the product.

I saw this answer on a website of a major Kosher hechsher.

*Dairy equipment (DE) means that the equipment is also used for dairy with no kosher cleaning protocol between the runs – almost always chalav stam. People who are stringent about Cholov Yisroel keilim should not use DE products. Some DE products bear the dairy symbol, because the manufacturer wants to be able to switch to a dairy ingredient without having to print new labels. *

Sometimes the entire plant is certified as dairy (often because the company does not want to stop production for koshering or extra monitoring required for pareve products) and there are no kosher safeguards in place preventing a change to an actual dairy ingredient.
Sometimes the product may contain actual dairy, even though it isn’t written on the label, because the machinery still discharges some dairy product at the beginning of a new run (like some very famous chocolate chips).
Sometimes an ingredient used in the product came from an all dairy facility and therefore makes the end product certified dairy.

Does the Rav consider these issues or can one rely on an ingredient label which contains no dairy ingredients. Can one eat products produced on DE after a meat meal?

Not a problem. If dairy is not in the ingredients then it’s not dairy.

So, are you saying there is no concern that the machinery might have discharged dairy product from a previous production of dairy into this new pareve product?

Can it be eaten with a meat meal or do you have to wait until after the meal?

Not concerned. May be eaten with meat meal.

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If you cooked a pareve food in a dairy pot, can you reheat it in a fleishig microwave and eat it with a pareve food cooked in a dairy oven? This is not assuming the heter of Rav Yitzchak Yosef that there is no problem cooking meat and dairy in the same microwave.

Sorry can’t bypass the “heter” of a microwave oven.

If the foods are covered the microwave is neither meat or milk. It remains pareve. And if only one of the items is always covered it also is permissible to heat the other.

So are you saying that if you warm up a pareve food in a fleishig microwave oven it becomes fleishig?

Also is there a problem if the microwave container has a lid/cover (which is used on when warming up the food) but the lid has a small opening at the top to let out steam. Is it still considered covered?

1st question.
No. If you heat up pareve in any microwave (even non kosher) just cover it while cooking and it’s fine.

2nd question.
Yes. A lid with slits on it for outgoing steam is still considered covered. Thereby it retains the same status as it was.