I personally feel that this is the OU’s worst policy- not to use DE. Their reasoning is that when using Dairy equipment, it can sometimes be difficult to verify that there is no real milchik residue left in the machine which might not be batul. That is what OU told me.
But this creates a tremendous michshol. Look at all these people who think Oreos is really DE. As mentioned above, this is not true about all the Oreo varieties. And what happens if Oreos changes their formula and puts actual dairy into the cookies? How will anybody know about the change?
I know so many people who eat real dairy products after fleishigs because they think OU-D is really D.E.. A regular average person is not familiar with different ingredients, and does not know what is real milk and what is not.
Why can’t the OU act like every other hashgocho and label D.E. as D.E.!?!