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Food News


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.

Newer news

Remilk Makes History as First Animal-Free Milk Protein Greenlit for Use in Canada

February 5, 2024 - from the PR Newswire:

"Remilk, a global leader in the development and production of animal-free dairy, announced today it has received Health Canada's "Letter of No Objection", enabling the use and sale of its animal-free BLG protein in Canada.

"In Feb 2023, Remilk received a "No Questions Letter" from the FDA and the Singapore Food Agency's approval. The company made headlines again in April as the first to receive regulatory approval of its kind in Israel. Now, it is the first company producing animal-identical protein to receive Health Canada's No Objection Letter. The letter opens Canada's door for use of Remilk's protein in a variety of products with the same taste and texture as milk, ice cream, yogurt, cream cheese, and more, while free of lactose, cholesterol, and growth hormones, and with significant nutritional and environmental benefits.

"Remilk's animal-free BLG milk protein is equivalent to its cow-derived counterpart, but it is produced without a single cow, via precision fermentation. The company manufactures its protein at commercial scale in several locations around the world."

The previous item can be cited with the URL: https://www.kashrut.com/News/?alert=W1499

Illinois Attempts to Follow California’s Lead, Proposes Food Additives Ban

January 25, 2024 - from the Food Processing:

"Illinois Food Safety Act introduced in state senate would prohibit use of brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben, red dye No. 3 and titanium dioxide in packaged foods sold in the state.

"Lawmakers in the state of Illinois are attempting to follow the lead of their California counterparts, introducing this week new legislation to ban five food additives in the state.

"Illinois Sec. of State Alexi Giannoulias, state Sen. Willie Preston (D-Chicago) and state Rep. Anne Stava-Murray (D-Downers Grove) initiated the Illinois Food Safety Act — Senate Bill 2637 — which calls for the prohibition of the use of brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben, red dye No. 3 and titanium dioxide in candy, soda and other “ultra-processed,” packaged food products sold in the state.

"The legislation points out links to health problems for each of the targeted ingredients, as well as the fact that they are banned in the European Union and other countries. It also mentions California’s law banning four of the five on Illinois’ list (titanium dioxide was removed from the California law). Advocates say the law is designed to protect children more likely to consume products containing the listed ingredients, and more at risk for the negative health impacts linked to the ingredients.

"The bill also calls on an Illinois-based university or research-focused institution to study health risks associated with two other food ingredients: butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT). If those additives (preservatives used in a wide variety of foods) are shown to pose a significant health risk, the bill says they would be subject to regulatory actions as well."

The previous item can be cited with the URL: https://www.kashrut.com/News/?alert=W1497

Imagindairy jumpstarts industrial cow-free milk protein plant amid hybrid dairy revolution

January 30, 2024 - from the Food Ingredients First:

"Imagindairy, an Israeli food tech start-up crafting 'authentic' dairy proteins without cows, has acquired industrial-scale precision fermentation production lines at a new facility. This advancement for bovine-free dairy comes as Japanese food researchers under DAIZ Engineering are teaming up to scale the new European Germination Food-Tech Center located in the Netherlands’ 'Food Valley' to drive innovation for hybrid dairy solutions unlocking the nutritional “power of germination” in seeds.

"At present, Imagindairy is already producing industrial-scale batches in the new facility at a competitive cost structure to traditional dairy. The new facility allows Imagindairy access to production at more than 100,000 liters of fermentation capacity, with planned capacity expansion to triple this volume in the next one to two years.

"Imagindairy considers fully owning and operating the production and manufacturing of its animal-free dairy protein a “big step forward,” allowing the company full control of the production process and the flexibility to scale up to support mass-market adoption as an industrial company.

"Imagindairy’s new facility announcement comes on the heels of another major company milestone, as the start-up received a 'no questions' response letter from the US Food & Drug Administration last month for the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) notice submitted by the company.

"This signifies that the ingredient is safe to be used in food and beverage products, providing a regulatory green light for food and beverage manufacturers to partner with Imagindairy.

"Products made using Imagindairy’s animal-free dairy protein are expected to be launched in the US in the coming year.

"The new facility is located in the “Food Valley” of the Netherlands, in Wageningen, where global agricultural and food-technologies are centered. Over 1,500 food-related and chemical companies from various countries gather at this hub and collaborative efforts across different industries and partnerships among academia, industry and government are driving food tech development here.

"Based on the acquired expertise in plant-based proteins, the new Food-Tech Center will develop new food ingredients which will be proposed to global food manufacturers. "

The previous item can be cited with the URL: https://www.kashrut.com/News/?alert=W1496

Aleph Farms: Israel Awards the World’s First Regulatory Approval for Cultivated Beef

January 11, 2024 - from the Green Queen:

"Israel’s Aleph Farms has become the first company in the world to earn regulatory approval for cultivated beef, after the Israeli Ministry of Health (IMOH) issued a ‘no questions’ letter for its consumer brand Aleph Cuts in December – akin to an FDA ‘No Questions’ letter in the US. It allows the producer to market its products – currently priced similarly to premium conventional beef – in the country, with plans to roll out at restaurants and, eventually, retailers.

"With the greenlight, Israel joins a very short list of countries to allow the sale of cultured meat – only Singapore (Eat Just in 2020) and the US (Upside Foods and Eat Just in 2023) have done so. But these approvals were all done for cell-based chicken products, meaning Aleph Farms is the first company permitted to sell cultivated beef.

"The first product to be unveiled is Aleph Farms’ cultivated thin-cut Petit Steak, which was first introduced in April with the Aleph Cuts brand. The hybrid meat product comprises non-modified, non-immortalised cells of a premium Black Angus cow named Lucy, alongside a plant protein matrix made of soy and wheat. Apart from the starter cells derived from one of the cow’s fertilised eggs, there are no other animal-sourced components (such as fetal bovine serum, or FBS) in the cultivation process or final product.

"On the cost question, he revealed: 'At the time of our soft launch, Aleph Cuts will be priced similarly to premium conventional beef. We are taking various steps to drive economies of scale and achieve price parity with more of the conventional beef market within a few years from launch.'

"Aleph Farms’ regulatory approval in Israel is a huge win – but it isn’t stopping there. The company has filed for clearance in Singapore, Switzerland, the UK and the US, and is advancing its applications in other markets too.

"The company is simultaneously pursuing a kosher certificate for its facility from local rabbinate authorities too. This is key for a company based in Israel and catering to a large Jewish population, which eats kosher food as directed by the Torah. There are encouraging signs for Aleph Farms here, with Israel’s chief rabbi David Lau declaring last January that its non-FBS steak could be considered kosher and akin to eating a vegetable (parve). (Chief Rabbi: Cultured meat is considered a vegetable but can't be consumed with dairy)"

The previous item can be cited with the URL: https://www.kashrut.com/News/?alert=W1495

Arizona could join states in stand against cultivated meat

January 11, 2024 - from the FoodDive:

"The proposed Arizona bill would also apply to any “synthetic product derived from a plant, insect or other source,” said Nguyen.

"The lawmaker told Capital Media Services that the bill is more about transparency and disclosure within the industry and less about blocking the offering and purchasing of such products.

"Protection of Arizona’s cattle ranchers was also top of mind in regard to the drafting of the bill, as state Rep. David Marshall, a Republican from Arizona, wants to take the legislation a step further by allowing business owners “adversely affected” by the sale of lab-grown meats to sue to stop the practice and be able to collect damages of up to $100,000.

"Florida has also proposed legislation that would criminalize the sale and distribution of cultivated meat, both to protect the cattle and farming industries. State Rep. Tyler Sirois has reportedly said he hopes the Sunshine State is the first to ban lab-grown meat altogether.

"Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill in May 2023 requiring clear labeling of analogs of meat, poultry, seafood and eggs, as well as cultivated meat, which requires the products to clearly state they were made through cell cultivation.

"In November 2023, a Nebraska senator reintroduced the Real Marketing Edible Artificials Truthfully Act, which would make alternative protein companies clearly display “imitation” on their packaging.

"Since its grand entrance to the U.S. market per full approval from the USDA last year, cultivated meat has run into challenges from all angles.

"Consumer acceptance remains a steep hurdle to jump while production costs keep the space from offering competitive prices to traditional meat products.

"The Good Food Institute as well as early players in the space like Upside Foods and Eat Just have taken their stance that any prohibitions are a violation of their first amendment rights.

"'Everyone should play by the same rules,' said GFI in a statement, 'we actively oppose laws that unfairly restrict the use of standard meat and dairy terms on plant-based meat, plant-based milk, and other alternative protein labels.'"

The previous item can be cited with the URL: https://www.kashrut.com/News/?alert=W1494

Strauss Group to hike prices, lay off 150 workers

January 16, 2024 - from the Times of Israel:

"Israeli food company Strauss Group announced price rises on a quarter of its products on Tuesday. From February 1, the price of Strauss’s olive oil will rise by 25%, chocolate bars will rise by 12-14%, chocolate snacks will rise by 4-9%, chocolate drinks, and cocoa will rise by 10%, coffee will rise by 12%, hummus will rise by 3-6%, tahini will rise by 5%. Prices of other snack products will rise by 6-9%.

"The company says that the decision to raise prices follows large rises in prices of raw materials in the past year. It says that prices of butter and cacao pulp have risen by 88%, the price of tahini has risen by 30%, and prices of sugar and olive oil have risen by 60%. It estimates the effect on its costs of these price rises at over NIS 100 million.

"Strauss emphasizes that prices of its dairy products, Turkish coffee, coffee capsules, instant coffee, Yad Mordechai honey, “Ta’am hateva” (“Taste of Nature”) products, and fresh salad vegetables, will not rise in this round.

"This is Strauss Group’s fourth round of price hikes in the past thirteen months.

"Strauss Group also announced further streamlining measures, in addition to several such measures that it has carried out in the past year, laying off 150 employees, mainly at the management level, which will not include employees who have been evacuated or those serving in the army reserves. The layoffs are expected to save the company between NIS 45 million and NIS 55m. annually."

The previous item can be cited with the URL: https://www.kashrut.com/News/?alert=W1493

Undeterred by Oct. 7 massacre, foreign interns keep Gaza-periphery dairy farms afloat

January 13, 2024 - from the Times of Israel:

"Dairy farms along Israel’s Gaza border have been supplying milk uninterruptedly since the outbreak of the war on October 7 owing to a small cadre of staff that remained behind while most residents evacuated to the center of the country. Among those who stayed are an unlikely group — university students from Africa and Asia.

"The students were offered the opportunity to relocate, says Altmark, but unlike Zikim’s foreign workers who were quick to leave, the students insisted on remaining.

"Zikim’s five interns are among more than 3,200 university students from 30 countries in the developing world currently training at farms across Israel. About 250 were on farms near Gaza when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed the border and brutally massacred 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted roughly 240 more to the Gaza Strip, leading Israel to launch an ongoing military operation aimed at returning the hostages and removing Hamas from power in the Strip.

"The main difficulty faced by Israeli residents in the vicinity of Gaza seems to have passed, says Emily Di Capua, noting that the incessant rocket attacks of the past few months have nearly ceased. Belgian-born Di Capua is the manager of the dairy farm at Kibbutz Karmiya, located two kilometers (1.2 miles) to the east of Zikim.

"The agricultural interns working at the kibbutz dairy farms are participants in a one-year program administered by MASHAV, the Foreign Ministry’s Agency for International Development Cooperation. In addition to dairy farming, students are training in orchard and field crops, poultry and livestock raising, and fisheries. The students do paid work on a farm five days a week and spend one day studying at one of the country’s five international agricultural training centers.

"Unlike the temporary foreign workers in Israeli farms, who usually come from small villages and have a limited educational background, the agricultural interns are all university-educated and many are aspiring entrepreneurs.

"The Internship in Agriculture Program was initiated by the Arava International Center for Agricultural Training in 1994, but Israel has a long history of reaching out to the developing world, going back to the 1950s when then-prime minister David Ben Gurion mandated extensive programs that lasted for decades. A United Nations Development Program report noted in 1975 that Israel was the largest contributor of assistance per capita of any country in the world.

"Many of those programs have dwindled since then, but as the agricultural internship program in the past few months has shown, Israel continues to reap benefits in unexpected ways."

The previous item can be cited with the URL: https://www.kashrut.com/News/?alert=W1492

Taxes on sugary drinks cut consumer sales by 33%, study says

January 6, 2024 - from the CNN:

"Raising the price of sugar-sweetened sodas, coffees, teas and energy, sports and fruit drinks by an average of 31% reduced consumer purchases of those drinks by a third, according to a new analysis of restrictions implemented in five US cities.

"'For every 1% increase in price, we found a 1% decrease in purchases of these products,” Kaplan said. “The decrease in consumer purchases occurred almost immediately after the taxes were put in place and stayed that way over the next three years of the study'

"Many sugar-sweetened beverages are packed with calories, have little to no nutritional value and contribute to chronic diseases, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and stroke, studies have found. Even one serving daily of a sugary soft drink was associated with higher risk of cardiovascular disease, according to a 2020 study.

"No or low-calorie diet drinks have also been linked to chronic disease, while both sugary and artificially sweetened beverages have been shown to increase the risk of dying early from several causes.

" The new study did not examine the health impact of reducing sales of sugary drinks, but an earlier one by Tufts University researchers did, Kaplan said.

"That study,published in 2019, found that a 15% to 20% reduction “in consumption of sugary beverages, if expanded nationally, would reduce the health care costs over the average American life span by $270 per person, or $45 billion in total,” Kaplan said.

"The analysis, published Friday in JAMA Health Forum, looked at per ounce tax plans by ZIP code in Boulder, Colorado; Oakland, California; Philadelphia; Seattle; and San Francisco.

" 'The last tax that we looked at was implemented in January 2018. And you might ask, "Well, why haven’t there been any more?" And that’s because states like California and Washington have passed bills to basically preempt cities from doing so,' Kaplan said.

"'If states are going to preempt these taxes from going into place at the city level, then we might consider ways for these taxes to be implemented at a larger geographic level, potentially even at a federal level.'"

The previous item can be cited with the URL: https://www.kashrut.com/News/?alert=W1491

Avian flu surges in Northern California, threatening national poultry, egg supplies

January 7, 2024 - from the The Hill:

"Avian flu surges in Northern California, threatening national poultry, egg supplies

"Farms across California have had to euthanize several million chickens and ducks in recent weeks, as a wave of avian influenza threatens to upend national poultry and egg supplies.

"While cases of the disease have been cropping up throughout the U.S., agricultural hubs in Northern California have endured the greatest losses over the past month.

"As of midday Friday, about 10.62 million birds in 63 flocks nationwide had been affected by highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks over the past 30 days, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

"Of these flocks, 37 were commercial and 26 were backyard, and a total of 3.8 million birds were concentrated in California.

"The current spike in HPAI — on the rise since mid-fall — is the latest escalation in a nationwide outbreak that has ebbed and flowed since 2022.

"HPAI is typically introduced into the U.S. from wild birds that migrate along the East Asian Flyway and cross paths with birds traveling along the North American routes, according to UC Davis’s Western Institute for Food Safety and Security.

"Pitesky described migratory birds as “the primary reservoir” for HPAI, noting that ducks and geese often travel thousands of miles — meeting during fall in the Arctic, before heading south.

"While wild waterfowl often carry the virus without developing symptoms, spreading to domestic poultry can result in what institute researcher Michael Payne described in a statement as "“catastrophic mortality.'"

The previous item can be cited with the URL: https://www.kashrut.com/News/?alert=W1490

Israel: War-linked hikes in prices of fruits and vegetables worsening food insecurity – report

January 8, 2024 - from the Times of Israel:

"Leket Israel’s annual report says half of discarded agricultural produce is fit for human consumption and should be saved, claims imports only raise prices.

"Israel’s war against Hamas is making things even worse than they normally are for the 1.4 million Israelis who can’t afford healthy food, according to an annual report published Monday.

"Less food can be rescued and distributed to the needy, says Leket Israel, which published the Food Waste and Rescue Report, because of damage to agriculture along the Gaza border in the south and Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where the IDF is involved in daily skirmishes with the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah.

"The relative scarcity of blue-and-white agricultural produce, and the doubling of imports to 60,000 tons since the war began, has sent prices rising by double-digit percentages, making fresh fruit and vegetables even less affordable than usual, said the document, released in cooperation with the health and environmental protection ministries.

"According to the National Insurance Institute, 16.5 percent of households suffered from food insecurity in 2022. This translates into 1.4 million people, or 14.5% of the total population.

"Leket rescues food that would otherwise be thrown away and distributes it to those in need via some 200 nonprofit organizations.

"Around 2.6 million tons of food was wasted in 2022, worth roughly NIS 23.1 billion ($6.5 billion), and representing around 37% of the total amount of food produced in the country, the report said.

"Those figures are similar to ones from previous years, as are the still-unanswered calls on the government to help the economy, the environment, and the poor by developing a policy to save the roughly half of that wasted food that according to Leket is fit for human consumption.

"About 20% of Israel’s agricultural land is located in the Gaza border area. This includes 60% of the potato fields, 50% of tomato fields, and 40% of the areas where carrots and cabbages are grown. Around a third of the farmland in areas close to the Gaza border has been off-limits since October 7 for security reasons.

"Another 10% of agricultural land is close to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, the report said. This region includes around 60% of the apple orchards and more than 35% of orchards growing peaches. It also produces a large proportion of the country’s eggs and turkey meat.

"Countrywide, around 40% of the agricultural workforce (30,000 people) has been lost. Foreign workers, largely from Thailand, went home after the war began, while Palestinians are not presently allowed to enter the country.

"The thousands of volunteers who have been helping to harvest fruit and vegetables have not managed to replace hired hands.

"In the first week after the outbreak of war, tomato prices rose by about 50%, and by December the wholesale price was still 33% higher than it had been just before the war, the report said. The price of cucumbers increased by about 90% during this time. The price of potatoes rose by about 40% in the first two weeks of the fighting, and by December the wholesale price was still about 20% higher than the prewar price.

"The report cited predictions that this winter will see a 30% drop in the average production of tomatoes, a 10% shortage of cucumbers, and 20% fewer cabbages."

The previous item can be cited with the URL: https://www.kashrut.com/News/?alert=W1489
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