K A S H R U T . C O M_©

The following regulatory news are from the New York Department of Health posted and barfblog on June 16, 2010 with additional information on July 28, 2010.

July 28, 2010: www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/rii/index.shtml has information on a number of kosher restaurants.

July 2010, New York City is requiring certain food service establishments to post letter grades that correspond to their sanitary inspection scores. In the first year or so of grading, most restaurants will earn a B grade. Restaurants with B or C grades should improve their overall food safety practices, but the Health Department immediately closes restaurants with conditions that may be hazardous to public health. Visit nyc.gov/health/restaurants to get more information and see inspection details and to search for restaurants by grade, neighborhood, cuisine and more. It will take a little over a year to grade all of the city's existing restaurants. New restaurants are not graded until they have been open for a few weeks.

The following information is from the RSSL and UCDavis posted on JULY 25, 2010.

Over the past several years, trained olive oil tasters who have served on IOC-recognized sensory panels have reported to the UC Davis Olive Center that much of the olive oil sold in the United States as “extra virgin” does not meet this modest sensory standard. Moreover, there have been media reports of fraud in the olive oil business, where extra virgin olive oils have been adulterated with cheaper refined oils such as hazelnut oil. Another method is to adulterate extra virgin olive oil with cheaper refined olive oil, thereby making chemical detection of adulteration more difficult. More information about this study can be found at UCDavis.

The following intersting story about camel milk is from the FoodmanufacturingC and Natural Products Marketplace posted on JULY 22, 2010.

People are trying to introduce Camel milk into the US and Europe. It is illegal to sell in the United States. The European Commission has provisionally approved plans by two Middle Eastern camel farms to export the milk. Gil and Nancy Riegler, owners of the US's largest camel dairy near San Diego are making their camel's milk into soap. "If we could sell camel's milk right now, we would have to charge $40 to $60 a liter" according to Nancy Riegler, an owner of the dairy. A Dubai company offers a camel milk chocolate bar, at a San Francisco shop for $12 for just 2.5 ounces. Camel's milk also tastes salty and is more watery than cow's milk.

The following health alert is from the BBC on JULY 9, 2010.

Chinese food safety officials have seized 64 tonnes of raw dairy materials contaminated with the toxic industrial chemical melamine. The Chinese state news agency, Xinhua, reported that the quality watchdog in Qinghai province took the material from a dairy plant there. Test samples showed the milk powder carried up to 500 times the maximum allowed level of the chemical. The latest batch of contaminated powder was first found in Gansu province and traced back to the Dongyuan Dairy Factory in Minhe Country, in neighbouring Qinghai. Another 12 tonnes of finished milk powder products, also found to be tainted, were seized.