THIS SECTION IS FOR NEWS AND INTERESTING STORIES RELATED TO FOOD, NUTRITION AND FOOD PROCESSING. THEY ARE NOT NECESSARILY RELATED TO KOSHER BUT MAY BE OF INTEREST TO THE KOSHER CONSUMER, MANUFACTURER OR MASHGIACH.
October 8, 2024 from Tridge:
"The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fishing and Food reports a projected 48% increase in Spanish olive oil production this season, reaching approximately 1.26 million tons. This boost follows two poor harvests that had driven prices up, earning olive oil the nickname 'liquid gold.' Although prices have dropped over 20% from their peak, consumers might not experience immediate price reductions due to existing supply contracts. Additionally, the ongoing harvest could still be impacted by future weather conditions."
October 3, 2024 from Chron:
"Earlier this week, high-end olive oil producer CHO America put out a strange be-on-the-lookout request for its products. Apparently, over $2.5 million worth of premium extra virgin olive oil was stolen from its Houston warehouse over the weekend.
"According to a press release and KHOU-TV, CHO America said 18 truckloads full of 290 pallets, each containing 672 bottles of premium Terra Delyssa olive oil, were stolen from a Houston warehouse near Navigation Boulevard.
"Known for its dark glass bottle, yellow label and horse logo, Terra Delyssa’s olive oil retails for around $20 per bottle. The Tunisian single-origin, cold-pressed olive oil is also fully traceable: Customers can scan the bottle’s QR code and enter a lot number to see the harvesting and bottling process. CHO America is asking that bottles with the following lot numbers be reported to Terra Delyssa at info@terradelyssa.com or by phone at 281-712-1549:
September 25, 2024 from the CNN:
"Supermarket prices are no longer skyrocketing – except, of course, if you’re buying eggs.
"Egg prices spiked by 28.1% in August from 12 months ago, easily the biggest increase out of any food item tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"The sticker shock in the egg aisle comes even as overall grocery prices are barely budging (up less than 1% in August from last year) and inflation cools across the US economy.
"The main culprit for rising egg prices is a familiar one: bird flu.
"Birds are getting sick, and that means fewer eggs and higher prices at the grocery store. Mp>"Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), more commonly known as the bird flu, has impacted nearly 101 million birds across 48 US states since January 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"Part of the problem may lie in consolidation. Like other industries, the egg industry has experienced a wave of mergers that has left the nation more reliant on only a handful of large producers.
"As of 2020, the five biggest egg companies controlled between 36% and 40% of all egg-laying hens in the United States, according to a recent report by Farm Action, a group that fights corporate control of the food system.
September 23, 2024 from Food Dive:
"The proposal to buy the company for $25 a share comes as Lifeway’s leadership remains embroiled in a bitter family dispute and the manufacturer faces shareholder calls to sell itself.
"Danone has been a shareholder in Lifeway for more than two decades and has had a front-row seat to the inner workings of the company — both good and bad.
"Lifeway acknowledged receiving Danone’s offer on Tuesday and said it would “carefully review and evaluate the proposal to determine the course of action.'"
September 24, 2024 from Vinnews.com:
"Jordan refuses to export tomatoes to neighboring Israel, even after the Israeli Health Ministry reinstated produce imports under certain conditions, Ynet reported on Tuesday. The imports were suspended last month over concerns about cholera.
"The ministry’s National Food Services requested a halt to shipments of some fresh fruits and vegetables from Jordan after they tested positive for the cholera bacteria, in runoff from the Yarmuk River, the largest tributary of the Jordan River.
"Sources in Israel’s Agriculture Ministry said that “the Jordanians were offended by the unilateral announcement and are awaiting an apology from the Health Ministry.”
"According to the sources, Amman could be using the incident as an excuse to “punish” Jerusalem over its prolonged conflict with terrorist groups in Gaza and Lebanon.
"'With a global shortage of tomatoes and rising demand, Jordanian growers have no issue finding alternative markets,' the sources added.
"Israel turned to Jordan for tomatoes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan banned exports to the Jewish state in support of Ankara’s Hamas allies.
"Turkey’s boycott and a drop in domestic crop yields due to extreme heat this past summer are contributing to a tomato shortage in Israel.
"Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security said on Monday that it would open an additional import quota for 5,000 tons of tariff-free tomatoes effective until December. A similar 5,000-ton quota was approved in mid-August by the Health Ministry, with 2,500 tons already entering Israel, mostly from Poland.
"Despite the tariff exemptions, prices are steep due to a global shortage and high demand in Israel, with regular tomatoes selling in most stores at 12 shekels (just over $3.00), and up to 15 shekels ($4.00) in some stores and cluster tomatoes going up to between 25 ($6.50) and 45 shekels ($12.00) per kilogram (2.2 pounds), contributing to a 10% increase in the Consumer Price Index.
"Israelis consume around 14,000 tons of tomatoes per month on average. Local production usually meets most of the demand, supplemented by imports, but this year it’s not the case."
September 23, 2024 - from the Potato News Today:
"The company’s Kolkata factory devised a way to recapture the steam vapor created when the potato slices enter the fryer. That steam is the water that is in the potato, and PepsiCo redirects first as low-grade waste heat to offset thermal processes, and then, after the steam is condensed into water and cleaned, the company returns it to the plant to offset freshwater uses in other processes,
On a standard potato chip line, it will be about 14 million gallons of water that we will be able to reclaim and reuse to offset from freshwater use. This adds up to about 60 million liters of water per year at a single site, according to PepsiCo."
September 17, 2024 - from the KCRA:
"Paper or plastic" will no longer be a choice at grocery store checkout lines in California under a new law signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom that bans all plastic shopping bags.
"California had already banned thin plastic shopping bags at supermarkets and other stores, but shoppers could purchase bags made with a thicker plastic that purportedly made them reusable and recyclable.
"The new measure, approved by state legislators last month, bans all plastic shopping bags starting in 2026. Consumers who don't bring their own bags will now simply be asked if they want a paper bag.
"State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, one of the bill's supporters, said people were not reusing or recycling any plastic bags. She pointed to a state study that found that the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed per person grew from 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms) per year in 2004 to 11 pounds (5 kilograms) per year in 2021.
"Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said the previous bag ban passed a decade ago didn't reduce the overall use of plastic.
"Twelve states, including California, already have some type of statewide plastic bag ban in place, according to the environmental advocacy group Environment America Research & Policy Center. Hundreds of cities across 28 states also have their own plastic bag bans in place."
June 17, 2024 - from the Civil Eat:
"In the end, it may have been fears that Kraft Heinz would remove plastic tubs of Cool Whip or individually wrapped processed cheese slices from grocery store shelves that defeated an ambitious packaging reduction and recycling bill in the New York State Legislature.
"Whatever the cause, a bill that would have fundamentally reshaped how single-use plastic waste is managed in the fourth-largest state went down to defeat earlier this month in the New York State Assembly after passing in the State Senate, as lawmakers completed their regular legislative session.
"The opposition to the legislation, which included provisions known as “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, will be ready, too. Typically, EPR holds producers of products responsible for their management through the product’s lifecycle.
"Beyond Plastics saw the bill as a national model, and the most comprehensive in the country. It sought to address not only recycling and waste reduction but also would have banned some of the most toxic chemicals found in plastic packaging.
"ive other states have passed EPR laws for plastic packaging, from Maine in 2021 to Minnesota, the latest, earlier this year. Maine and Minnesota both left many of the details to be worked out by state agencies.
"California’s bill, passed in 2022, is the most ambitious to become law so far—seeking to cut single-use plastic packaging and food service ware by 25 percent; recycle 65 percent of single-use plastic packaging and food service ware; and make 100 percent of single-use packaging and plastic food service ware recyclable or compostable.
"But some critics, Beyond Plastics among them, worry that the California law allows for easy exemptions, gives the industry too much control over itself and may have left the door open to chemical recycling, which in some common forms environmental groups consider to be tantamount to incineration, not actual recycling."
September 17, 2024 - from the FDA:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted an initiative to collect and test retail dark chocolate products and chocolate-containing products labeled as “dairy free” (or with similar free-of-milk claims)[1] for milk in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) and the Michigan State Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) in 2022 and 2023. The FDA designed the assignment, and the state agencies performed the sample collection and testing.
This initiative was part of the FDA’s continued efforts to protect consumers with food allergies and is a continuation of a similar initiative implemented by the FDA in FY2018-2019. The latest initiative included additional chocolate-containing products, such as chocolate chip cookies, chocolate syrups, and chocolate baking powders, which were not part of the previous data collections. The FY22-23 initiative also sought to gain insights into the extent to which retail chocolate and chocolate-containing products that bear dairy-free or similar claims contain unintended milk at levels that may be potentially hazardous to people with a milk allergy.
The FY22-23 initiative examined retail dark chocolate products and chocolate-containing products that were labeled as dairy-free or with similar free-of-milk claims. The state personnel only collected samples of products that did not list milk as an ingredient on the product label. Milk detected in the samples could have been present due to a variety of factors, including labeling error or allergen cross-contact. Allergen cross-contact refers to unintentional incorporation of an allergen into food; it may occur during manufacturing or at a firm that supplied a product ingredient.
The analytical results of the 210 samples collected and tested under this effort are provided in the table that accompanies this report. These samples represent multiple products from approximately 50 firms.
Of the 210 samples, 13 tested positive for milk (i.e., with levels above the limit of quantification of the Neogen Veratox for Total Milk Allergen ELISA test kit). Twelve of these 13 samples contained less than 80 ppm, with one sample testing at 1,083 ppm milk. These 13 samples were produced by three different firms: one cookie product from Firm A (out of one sample tested), eight chocolate bar products from Firm B (out of 17 samples tested), and four chocolate bar products from Firm C (out of 34 samples tested), as shown in the results table. The sample with 1,083 ppm milk was a chocolate bar by firm B.
Each of the 13 products with positive milk findings were found to have not only a “dairy-free” type of statement but also allergen advisory statements intending to indicate the possible presence of milk to consumers. Their labeling stated that the products were “…made in a facility that also processes milk,” or featured similar wording.
The use of the allergen-free claim together with the allergen advisory statements for the same allergen on a product label may provide inconsistent information to consumers and should therefore be avoided.
Preliminary investigations completed by the firms and state agencies have implicated the suppliers of dark chocolate ingredients used by the firms as a possible source of the unintended allergen presence. Firm A agreed to remove “dairy-free” claims from its products when the root cause analysis is complete and if the cause of the presence of milk could not be determined and eliminated. Firms B and C removed the “dairy-free claim” from their chocolate products and provided updated labels to the FDA and its state partners as confirmation.
In the FY 2022-2023 initiative, all samples found to contain milk had milk allergen advisory statements. The FDA advises that firms that use a voluntary allergen-free statement ensure that the product doesn’t contain the allergen and that there is no inconsistent allergen information on the product label. Consumers with milk allergies who choose to eat dairy-free labeled products may contact firms to ask them questions about how their products are made, including whether they are made on dairy-free dedicated equipment, whether the ingredients used are dairy-free, and whether they test their products with dairy-free claims to confirm the accuracy of the claims.
The presence of milk in dairy-free labeled products on the market remains a concern for the FDA, given the potential for a health hazard for consumers with milk allergies. The FDA will continue to monitor the U.S. food supply to protect consumers with food allergies.
September 13, 2024 - from the BBC:
"Online adverts for junk food will not be allowed from next year under new government rules introduced to tackle childhood obesity.
"The ban, which will also apply to adverts shown on TV before 21:00, will begin in October 2025.
"Health minister Andrew Gwynne said the restrictions will “help protect children” from advertising that evidence shows can influence their eating preferences from a young age.
"More than one in five children in England are overweight or obese by the time they start primary school, government statistics suggest. This rises to more than one in three by the time they leave."
September 9, 2024 from The Food Institute by Rabbi Moshe Elefant:
"More than 41% of U.S. food processors and manufacturers rely on kosher certification to help them reach a wider audience of consumers, reaching far beyond followers of observant Judaism.
"Research shows that manufacturers whose products carry a kosher supervision symbol obtain more favorable shelf space in supermarkets and outsell non-certified items of the same type by 20%. In short, manufacturers find it easier to get wholesalers and distributors to carry their products, while retailers find it easier to sell them.
"Tens of millions of American consumers – most of whom are not Jewish – see unique value in kosher-certified food products, making kosher certification one of the most successful marketing programs around.
"t’s estimated that approximately 70% of all food products on store shelves today have kosher certification.
"There are still many products that could be eligible for kosher certification, but for various reasons their makers have not applied for it. What many manufacturers and retailers may not realize is that going kosher doesn’t have to be complicated.
"For those with less cursory familiarity with them, the rules for kosher certification may seem complicated – but for many manufacturers, getting certified is likely not much more than a matter of filling out some forms.
"Assuming that a product does not contain outright non-kosher ingredients, such as pork, shellfish, non-ritually slaughtered beef or chicken, or non-kosher-certified cheeses, certification is likely to be just a matter of engaging with a certification agency’s supervisors, who will review ingredient lists and manufacturing processes.
"With over a million kosher certified raw ingredients on the market – from oils to stabilizers to colorings to everything in between – the chances are high that a product is already “kosher-ready,” with the certification process simply a verification of the ingredients, process, and factory location. With such a wide variety of certified raw ingredients, manufacturers should have no problem finding an equal or even superior certified ingredient of the same type to replace an uncertified one.
"Besides kosher-keeping consumers, and consumers seeking higher-quality manufactured food products, kosher certification appeals to a large subset of Americans with specialized diets – vegan consumers, religious consumers of several faiths, including Muslims and Seventh-Day Adventists, lactose-intolerant consumers, and those seeking gluten-free products.
"Vegans know that a product labeled “kosher pareve” will contain no meat or dairy products (except, possibly, eggs) so it’s safe for them to buy. The same goes for lactose-intolerant consumers, who are assured that the pareve label guarantees that no milk or milk-based ingredients are present.
"Those seeking gluten-free products will find a plethora of them in certified kosher products around Passover time, when the holiday’s prohibition on eating leavened grains prompt production of many items that do not contain any wheat, with ingredients like almond flour or potato starch substituting for the usual wheat flour in products like cereal, pasta, and even baked goods that look like bread.
"The food sector is extremely competitive, with producers of all kinds competing for shelf space, and spending billions annually on advertising, marketing, discounting, and other programs – all designed to get more consumers to adopt their product. Kosher certification isn’t as flashy as lavishly-produced TV or social media ads – but it is trusted by a growing number of consumers and is a proven way to increase business."
Ed. note: Article presenting why companies should become kosher to increase their sales.
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