This Article is Cross-Posted on KosherEye.com

Now it’s on to the Farm – a 50-mile drive from the plant.

As city dwellers, we did not know what to expect at the “chicken” farm. Wise Organic Poultry contracts with farmers willing to raise chickens to its high specifications – combining humane methods, proper feed, and ample space. To visit one such farm, we traveled to a picturesque well–maintained farm, owned by a grower in the Susquehanna Valley of Central Pennsylvania.

We donned disposable shoe coverings, a full body protective bodysuit, and head apparel. Prior to entering the main area where the chicks are kept, we stepped into an antiseptic, granular shoe disinfectant and proceeded into a large temperature controlled barn where the little chicks are raised. The birds, in this case Cobb chickens, were 8,000 in number. The chicks are vaccinated at the hatchery one day after birth, prior to their arrival at the growers. The vaccine dye shows up as pink on their backs to show they have been vaccinated. Although no antibiotics are ever used, vaccines are administered at the hatchery. A vaccine builds the birds’ immune system, allowing it to resist certain diseases. Think of it as similar to our “flu” vaccinations. When we exited the barn, we again stepped into the granular shoe disinfectant, removed the disposable covering and deposited them into a large disposable plastic bag.

The chicks are kept primarily indoors until they are three weeks old and then, weather permitting, given protected outdoor access. They are then considered “free roaming” and can come and go as they please. The barns have 8 hours of darkness every evening, “sleeping time”, a rule for growing organic birds.

Issac selected this grower because of the grower’s long time family farming history, his excellent reputation, and his dedication to a fully organic program. Theirs is a high–tech organic facility monitored with the latest equipment for health and welfare of the chickens.

A computer controls temperatures in each barn: It is automatically adjusted depending on the age of the chicks. The temperature usually starts at 92 degrees and is gradually lowered to 70 degrees as the birds age. Layers of saw dust cover the floor about 2–3 inches deep and the covering remains for the duration of the life of the particular flock.

To monitor the health of the flock, official monthly reports are required: barn record sheets are kept daily with documentation relating to  temperature, litter quality, health, air quality, rodent control, and water. Organic birds are required to each have one square foot of space in the barn as compared to .34 square feet for commercial birds.

Automatic feeding and water systems run the length of area. There is a stainless steel “nipple” for water. The steel glistens and attracts the birds to the water.  The chicks are not handled until they are hand caught for shipping. Most of Wise Organic Pastures’ chicks are shipped for slaughter at 6-8 weeks of age. Isaac processes 10,000 chickens per week, and he tries to increase production by at least 10% for holidays

Organic poultry is usually more costly than conventional poultry. Why? As we observed first hand, there are more stringent growing conditions. The feed must be organic and there are multiple space and atmosphere considerations. Not only is Issac Wiesenfeld concerned about the quality of the feed, the sanitation and health of the birds, but he is currently working diligently to add an additional label to his kosher, organic chickens; a humane notation on his label, indicating that the birds were raised in accordance with an officially recognized Animal Welfare Policy.

In the twelfth century, the writings of the Jewish physician Maimonides, detailed the medicinal properties of chicken and chicken soup. We hope that we have informed our readers, so that they can choose just the right healthy, delicious and nutritious chicken for every pot.

Wise Organic Pastures – The Processing Plant

This Article is Cross-Posted on KosherEye.com

Our Bubbie and “grand” Bubbies may have known how to make a famous roast chicken and of course, chicken soup, but certainly did not face the same chicken challenges that the kosher shopper faces today. Most chicken is no longer raised in the back yard! The consumer is now faced with numerous choices in quality, type and price.

Chicken has become a multi-billion dollar industry in America. Kosher chicken is no exception, but is somewhat more complicated. There has been extraordinary growth in kosher poultry sales in the last few decades. Along with observant Jews, many non-Jews and Jews who don’t necessarily adhere to kosher laws now purchase kosher poultry. Why? There is a perception that kosher certification adds a layer of clarity and transparency to poultry purchases. In addition to the FDA and government regulatory agencies, the processing plant must adhere to the specifications of a supervising kosher agency and rabbinical authority. Many consumers welcome this extra layer of inspection.

Kosher shoppers have choices to make. Our goal is to understand and to explain some of them to our readers.

Recently, as part of the KosherEye “kosher” summer road trip through Pennsylvania and Maryland, we were invited to tour both The Wise Organic Pastures processing plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania and a Wise Organic Poultry Farm, which is a 50-mile drive out into the Susquehanna Valley.

In Scranton, we had the pleasure of meeting Moshe Fink, founder of David Elliot Chicken and owner of the processing plant used by Wise Organic Pastures. He answered many of our technical kosher “processing” questions and provided background information.

According to Moshe, for poultry to be considered kosher, they must be in good health when slaughtered. The shochet must use a sharp knife and no stunning or electric shock is permissible before “shechita” (slaughter). Kosher poultry may not be heated, and blood must drip freely from the bird after slaughter. The knife must be sharp, the killing respectful, and the resulting blood symbolically “buried” under a floor covering – in this case a layer of sawdust, coal and ashes. The processing method is cold and no heat is ever applied.

Following slaughter, non-kosher poultry may be scalded with hot water. A natural occurrence from the use of hot water is that feathers just “slide” off. The result of kosher slaughter and cold processing is an unwelcome problem: residual feathers. If consumers are asked the one negative of kosher chicken, it is the feathers!

The David Elliot processing plant uses the “Cadillac” of defeathering machines, the LINCO, made in Sweden. But even with this mechanical wonder, which can be adjusted to the average size of the birds, due to the cold water processing system, feathers must be removed manually at the end of the processing line.

At the David Elliot plant, teams of workers stand with defeathering razor sharp knives and manually remove feathers after the machines have completed the initial process. Yes, this extra step of manual defeathering adds to the price of the poultry, and therefore, it is understandable that value priced poultry has more feathers when delivered to the consumer.

One positive aspect of the “kashering” process is very welcome. All kosher birds are soaked in fresh cold water for 1/2 hour, are than covered in salt for one hour, and then washed in fresh running water 3 times. This is done to follow the biblical prohibition to eating blood. Because of the salt “bath”, most consumers applaud the taste, which taste similar to culinary brining. Kosher chickens have won numerous taste awards including a contest held by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. In this contest, a main rule is no seasoning is allowed on the chickens. Empire Kosher Poultry has won several of these prizes and Moshe Fink attributes the consecutive awards to the kosher process – specifically salting!

Our poultry facility visit began with the gracious invitation of our host Issac Wiesenfeld, president and owner of  Wise Organic Pastures.His mother, Rachel Wiesenfeld started Wise Organic Pastures in 1992. She founded the company after the family faced a financial setback. According to Mrs. Wiesenfeld, there was “a need in the kosher poultry market for wholesome chicken raised the old-fashioned way — free range, organically fed, hormone-free — and processed according to strict kosher standards. At the time, there was organic chicken and there was kosher chicken, but no one was offering chicken that was both organic and kosher.”

Her son, Issac, the fifth child of 11 siblings, was the only sibling to join the company! The offices are based in Brooklyn, but the plant and farms are in Pennsylvania. The family has had a thriving business relationship with Moshe Fink for the past 18 years. Although the Wise Organic Pastures started 18 years ago, the company could not add the official organic label until the legislation was passed in Washington in Oct 2001. The Wiesenfelds are truly organic kosher pioneers! And, timing is everything. Since USDA established the National Organic Program officially in 2002, the organic food market has grown by almost 20 percent annually.

KosherEye was given a full tour of the entire David Elliott  processing plant. What did we see?

The sanitation and efficiency we observed at the plant was impressive. Before we were permitted to tour, we had to dress from head to toe, (including boots and hats) in sanitary cover. The shechita atmosphere was antiseptic. The Rabbi inspects each bird for blemishes or problems, and then skillfully and quickly cuts through the neck with a slash of his constantly sharpened knife. The job must be both holy and professionally precise. From the off-loading dock to the packaging area, the plant appears clean, well run and intense in purpose. Certainly the atmosphere is not for the squeamish; however it was a realistic view of how the chickens we eat are slaughtered, kashered, cleaned and packaged.

Both the Organic and Kosher poultry market has grown over the years. The economy certainly affects the consumer’s ability to buy the higher priced organic chickens- but, conversely, the number of organic buyers is growing.

For more information about Wise Organic Pastures, visit WiseOrganicPastures.com. To learn more about David Elliott poultry, call 570-344-6348.

This list, from Consumer Reports, of Common Industry Chicken Terms, is very informative.

Due to my son being an only child with little perspective on living with siblings- friendships, fights and loyalty, my husband and I adopted mans “best friend” with the hope it would become Jonah’s “little brother”. The big hope was that our gorgeous red and white cocker spaniel rescue dog was to would teach my son the responsibilities of caring for another dependent being. We had images of my son walking and feeding our new addition to the family.
What actually transpired was far from my vivid imagination. Flynn gravitated to me – I became his world and he, my shadow. Irrespective of my mood, Flynn was always happy to be with me and tail wagging to prove his point.

Being a rescue dog from an abusive environment, Flynn arrived at our home, skittish and fearful.  It was clear that my sweet Flynn with his honest spirit had been subject to tsa’ar ba’alei chayim : the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals.  Whenever I would offer my hand to pet him, his eyes would squint and his face would jerk, weary of a strike.

My Flynn with his expressive eyes, beckoned me to love, hug and protect him unconditionally. Flynn became my “baby”. Rather than Flynn becoming another sibling for my son, he became my toddler who needed all my attention and would reciprocate with loyalty, hugs and kisses.
Then it was almost two and a half years ago, that my husband and I were sitting around the Sabbath table with a roasted free-range chicken in front of us for dinner that I was struck with an epiphany. Looking at this headless chicken in its full form with the legs and everything intact, made me think of Flynn.

I asked myself, “How can I eat an animal and simultaneously live and love an animal?” I was definitely a product of our society, disassociating the head with the animal, not connected to a fellow mindful creature I was about to eat, but Flynn changed that all for me.

Before Flynn, I did not think too much about tsa’ar ba’alei chayim nor the innocent chicken living in cramped quarters, pumped up with hormones with the sole purpose to be my dinner.  It took Flynn’s gentle soul, my fellow companion to teach me that we are all connected to living creatures.

Suddenly eating this chicken became extremely unappetizing, and I just could not eat it.

My interspecies relationship with Flynn eventually raised my awareness that vegetarianism is life affirming. This was characterized by abstaining from all animal eating, embracing a vegetarian lifestyle related to gratitude for our animal kingdom, rather than entitlement and ownership.

Although I adopted Flynn from the harsh treatment of living with an abusive owner, Flynn in turn adopted me as well. He taught me that we are a part of nature rather than apart from nature. Flynn’s innocence and sweetness evoked a compassion for embracing cohabitation and respect for all animal life that I am grateful and has forever changed my life.

This article is Cross Posted on DrCate.com

Milk may be the single most historically important food to human health. Not just any milk, mind you, but raw milk from healthy, free-to-roam, grass-fed cows. The difference between the milk you buy in the store, and the milk your great-great grandparents enjoyed is, unfortunately, enormous. If we lived in a country where raw milk from healthy, pastured cows were still a legal product and available as readily as, say, soda or a handgun, we’d all be taller and healthier, and I’d see fewer elderly patients with hunched backs and broken hips. If you’re lucky enough to live in a state where raw milk is available in stores and you don’t buy it, you are passing up a huge opportunity to improve your health immediately. If you have kids, raw milk will not only help them grow, but will also boost their immune systems so they get sick less often. And, since the cream in raw milk is an important source of brain-building fats, whole milk and other raw dairy products will also help them to learn.

It’s a common misperception that milk drinking is a relatively new practice, one limited to Europeans. The reality is that our cultural—and now, our epigenetic—dependence on milk most likely originated somewhere in Africa. It is highly likely that milk consumption gave those who practiced animal husbandry such an advantage that it rapidly spread across the continent and then into Europe and Asia. With such widespread use, it’s likely that to allow for optimal expression, many of our genes now require it. In those countries where people’s stature most benefited from the consumption of raw milk, when raw milk is replaced with a processed alternative, their bones take the hardest hit. It’s a case of the bigger they are the harder they fall. In places like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, people now suffer from particularly high rates of osteoporosis and degenerative arthritis.^[i]

Our genes have been infused with real dairy products for tens of thousands of years. Recent geologic and climatologic research reveals that between 100,000 and 10,000 years ago, the Sahara was a lush paradise of grassland. During that window of abundance, the human population exploded. To deal with the consequential depletion of wild resources, people began experiments in “proto-farming,” a term coined by biologist and historian Colin Tudge to describe humanity’s slow-motion leap from living in harmony with the land as hunter-gatherers to adopting the now-familiar program of altering the ecology to suit our interests. Author Thom Hartmann explains in his book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight:

Something important happened around 40,000 years ago: humans figured out a way to change the patterns of nature so we could get more sunlight/food than other species did. The human food supply was determined by how many deer or rabbits the local forest could support […]. But in areas where the soil was too poor for farming or forest, supporting only scrub brush and grasses, humans discovered that ruminant (grazing animals like goats, sheep, and cows) could eat those plants that we couldn’t, and could therefore convert the daily sunlight captured by the scrub and wild plants on that “useless” land into animal flesh, which we could eat.

Or drink, as the case may be.

For millennia, much of the world’s population has depended largely on milk for nutritional sustenance. However, the medical world has been ignorant of milk’s nearly ubiquitous use, confused by the issue of lactose intolerance. Because Europeans have lower rates of lactose intolerance, most Western physicians presume that only European populations have historically practiced dairying. But this confusion arises in part because most Western physicians don’t know very much about fermentation.

Lactose Intolerance

Lactose is the major type of sugar in milk. Nearly everyone can digest it while we’re babies and dependent on our mother’s milk, but many people lose the lactase enzyme in the lining of the intestine, growing lactose intolerant as they get older. Fermentation breaks down lactose, and so you don’t need that enzyme as long as you only eat fermented dairy products, such as yoghurt and cheese. The reason people living in warmer climates tend to be lactose intolerant more often than Europeans stems from the fact that fermentation progresses rapidly in warmer climates. Once fermented, the potentially irritating lactose sugars are gone. A child living in a warmer climate would, after weaning, have such infrequent need for the lactase enzyme that the epigenetic librarian would simply switch the gene off. In cooler European climates, fresh milk stays fresh for hours or days, and was presumably consumed that way often enough to keep the lactase enzyme epigenetically activated throughout a person’s life. If you have true lactose intolerance, as opposed to a protein allergy, you should be able to tolerate yoghurt, cheese, and cream (dairy fat contains little to no lactose—and minimal protein).

Why Most Milk is Pasteurized Today

Most of us also have heard that milk needs to be pasteurized to be safe. But we haven’t heard the whole story. For perhaps thousands of years, people who gave their animals the basic, humane care they deserved survived and thrived drinking completely raw, fresh milk. The need for pasteurization was a reality when in-city dairies housed diseased cows whose hindquarters ran with rivulets of manure. Tainting milk’s reputation even further, around the same time, dairymen were often infected with diphtheria, spreading the deadly bacteria through the medium of warm, protein-rich milk. But no epidemics have ever been traced to raw milk consumption when the cows were healthy and the humans milking them were disease free.[ii] If the animal is sickly—as they invariably are when raise in crowded, nightmarish conditions—its milk should probably not be consumed at all. When that’s your only choice, then, yes it ought to be cooked first to reduce risk of potentially lethal infections including undulant fever, hemolytic uremia, sepsis, and more. But it’s not your only choice.

If you erase any ethical entanglement, impulse of social responsibility, nagging moral prohibition, and investment in human health, you could call milk pasteurization a good thing. In terms of volume of product output per production unit, pasteurization plays a crucial role in converting small family farms into perfectly efficient milk producers for the national brands: cheaper feed (silage and grain instead of fresh grass and hay), more cows per square foot, more “milk” per cow. That explains why big agribusiness roots for pasteurization. But how did the rest of us get convinced?

Our fear of fresh milk can be traced to the energetic campaigning of a man named Charles North who patented the first batch-processing pasteurization machine in 1907.[iii] A skilled orator and savvy businessman, he traveled small towns throughout the country creating publicity and interest in his machines by claiming to have come directly from another small town, just like theirs, where people were dying from drinking unpasteurized milk.[iv] Of course, his claims were total fiction and doctors were staunchly opposed to pasteurization.[v] The facts were on their side. Unfortunately, North had something better—fear. And he milked that fear right into a small fortune. The pasteurization industry mushroomed from nonexistence to a major political presence. Today, at the University of Pennsylvania where medical professors once protested that pasteurization “should never be had recourse to,”[vi] medical students are given lessons on the many health benefits of pasteurization.

Whenever I have a patient who was raised on a farm, one who looks tough and boasts how rarely they get sick, I ask them if they drank raw milk as a child. Nine times out of ten, they say yes. Every family dairyman I’ve talked to keeps raw milk around for their own families and happily testifies to its health benefits. Unlike meat or fruit or really any other food, milk is unique in that its one and only purpose is to nourish something else. Not only is it loaded with nutrients, it is engineered with an intricate micro-architecture that is key to enhancing digestive function while preventing the nourishing compounds from reacting with one another. Processing fundamentally alters this micro-architecture and diminishes nutritive value significantly. How much of a difference does this make? Enough that, based on their health and bone structure, I can guess with a high degree of accuracy which of my patients had access to raw milk as a child and which did not.

Since 1948, when states began passing mandatory pasteurization laws, raw milk fans have waged a bitter battle against government intervention. During hearings in which laws requiring pasteurization have been challenged, pasteurization proponents deny any nutritional difference between pasteurized, homogenized milk and raw. But as dairy scientists point out, heat denatures proteins, and homogenization explodes the fat droplets in milk. This is significant. Even to the naked eye, there’s a difference: Unlike cooked milk, the fresh product has a layer of cream floating at the top. But to fully understand how these two products differ, we need to bust out the microscope.

The Difference Between Fresh and Processed

If we put a drop of fresh milk on a slide, we see thousands of lipid droplets of varying size streaming under the cover slip and maybe a living lactobacilli or two wiggling from edge to edge. These come from the cow’s udders which, when well cared for, are colonized with beneficial bacteria, as is human skin. We want good bacteria in our milk. These probiotics protect both the milk and the milk consumer from pathogens. Good bacteria accomplish this by using the same bacterial communication techniques we read about in the section on fermentation.

Using the powerful electron microscope, we can magnify milk 10,000,000 times. Now we can see casein micelles, which are amazingly complex. Imagine a mound of spaghetti and meatballs formed into a big round ball. The strands of spaghetti are made of protein (casein), and the meatballs are made of the most digestible form of calcium phosphate, called colloidal calcium phosphate, which holds the spaghetti strands together in a clump with its tiny magnetic charge. This clumping prevents sugar from reacting with and destroying milk’s essential amino acids.

Each tiny globe of fat in the milk is enclosed inside a phospholipid membrane very similar to the membrane surrounding every cell in your body. The mammary gland cell that produced the fat droplet donated some of its membrane when the droplet exited the cell. This coating performs several tasks, starting in the milk duct where it prevents fat droplets from coalescing and clogging up mom’s mammary passageways. The milk fat globule’s lipid bilayer is studded with a variety of specialized proteins, just like the living cells in your body. Some proteins protect the globule from bacterial infection while others are tagged with short chains of sugars that may function as a signal to the intestinal cell that the contents are to be accepted without immune inspection, streamlining digestion. Still others may act as intestinal cell growth factors, encouraging and directing intestinal cells growth and function. As long as the coating surrounds the milk fat globule, the fat is easily digested, the gallbladder doesn’t have to squeeze out any bile for the fat to be absorbed, the fatty acids inside the blob are isolated from the calcium in the casein micelles, and everything goes smoothly. But if calcium and fats come into contact with one another, as we’ll see in a moment, milk loses much of its capacity to deliver nutrients into your body.

Let’s go back to the light microscope to take a look at pasteurized, homogenized milk and identify what distinguishes it from raw. One striking difference will be the homogeneity of fat globule sizes and the absence of living bacteria. But the real damage is hiding behind all this homogeneity and is only revealed under the electron microscope. Now, we see that these fat blobs lack the sophisticated bilayer wrapping and are instead caked with minerals and tangled remnants of casein micelles. Why does it look like this? The heat of pasteurization forces the sugar to react with amino acids, denaturing the proteins and knocking the fragile colloidal calcium phosphate out of the spaghetti-and-meatballs matrix, while the denatured spaghetti strands tangle into a tight, hard knot. Homogenization squeezes the milk through tiny holes under intense pressure, destroying the architecture of the fat globules. Once the two processing steps have destroyed the natural architecture of milk, valuable nutrients react with each other with health-damaging consequences.

Processing can render milk highly irritating to the intestinal tract, and such a wide variety of chemical changes may occur that processed milk can lead to diarrhea or constipation. During processing, the nice, soft meatball of colloidal calcium phosphate fuses with the fatty acids to form a kind of milk-fat soap. This reaction, called saponification, irritates many people’s GI tracts and makes the calcium and phosphate much less bioavailable and more difficult to absorb.[vii] How difficult? Food conglomerates have a lot of influence on the direction of research funding. And the dairy industry is big business. Little wonder that no studies have been funded to compare the nutritional value raw, whole cow’s milk to pasteurized head-to-head. But studies have been done on skim milk and human breast milk comparing fresh versus pasteurized, and the difference is dramatic: Processed milks contained anywhere from one half to one sixth the bioavailable minerals of the fresh products.[viii]^,[ix] When fresh, the milk fat globule carries signal molecules on the surface, which help your body recognize milk as a helpful substance as opposed to, say, an invasive bacteria. Processing demolishes those handy signals and so, instead of getting a free pass into the intestinal cell, the curiously distorted signals slow the process of digestion down so much that it can lead to constipation.[x] Heat destroys amino acids, especially the fragile essential amino acids, and so pasteurized milk contains less protein than fresh.[xi] But the damaged amino acids don’t just disappear; they have been glycated, oxidized and transformed into stuff like N-carboxymethyl-lysine, malonaldehyde, and 4-hydroxynonanal—potentential allergens and pro-inflammatory irritants.[xii]

And there’s more. Many of the active enzymes in fresh milk designed to help streamline the digestive process have also been destroyed. Other enzymes, such as xanthine oxidase, which ordinarily protect the milk (but cause damage inside our arteries) can play stowaway within the artificially formed fat blobs and be absorbed. Normally our digestive system would chop up this enzyme and digest it. But hidden inside fat, it can be ingested whole, and may retain some of its original activity. Once in the body, xanthine oxidase can generate free radicals and lead to atherosclerosis and asthma. One more thing that makes raw milk special is the surface molecules on milk fat globule membranes, called gangliosides. Gangliosides inhibit harmful bacteria in the intestine. Once digested, they’ve been shown to stimulate neural development.[xiii] Homogenization strips these benefits away.

What does all this scientific data mean to you? It means that the processed milk you buy in the store is not milk, not really. If you can’t find a good source of fresh, unprocessed milk, what can you do? Get the next best thing: yoghurt made from organic, whole milk. The fermentation process rejuvenates damaged proteins and makes minerals more bioavailable. A breakfast of yoghurt, fresh fruit slices, and nuts is nutritionally far superior to cold cereal and processed milk. But if you aren’t ready to give up milk for breakfast, then get organic whole milk (not low fat), preferably from cows raised on pasture—not grain! Non-organic dairy may seem cheaper, but in reality you get far less nutrition for the dollar than you do with organic because at least organically raised cows produce milk. The stuff that comes out of malnourished cows living in cement milk-factories hardly qualifies as such. Whatever you do, avoid soymilk. The primary difference between Yoohoo, a junk-food beverage snack sold in your local 7-11 and the soymilk sold in the health food stores is that Yoohoo is flavored with chocolate.

Splendor in the Grass: Anti-Cancer CLA

Source matters. The anti-cancer properties of a fatty acid called CLA (conjugated linolenic acid) are extremely potent. In a new clinical trial investigating the ability of CLA to reverse cancer in women undergoing biopsies, Dartmouth-Hitchock investigators use a single, approximately 800 mg dose and believe regressions will be visible in ten days. Ruminant animals’ (goats, sheep, cows, camel, etc.) milk and meat offer us the only natural source of CLA. But not all that ruminates fits the bill.

Milk from cows feeding on freshly growing grass contains more than 500 percent the CLA of milk from cows fed grain.[xiii] To give you an idea of the difference, 2-3 Tbs of grass fed butter (200-300 calories) are equivalent to the 800 mg being studied to reverse cancerous growths at Dartmouth-Hitchocock, but it would take 10-15 Tbs of grain-fed butter (1000-1500 calories) to get the same dose of CLA. (If you aren’t into dairy, then gently cook one untrimmed NY strip steak, or bone-marrow medallion, or other fat-rich bit of bovinious bliss from an animal that’s been properly pastured.)

The best time of year to introduce yourself to raw milk varies depending on your local climate. You want the animals to be eating fresh, growing grass because that’s their natural food and they will be healthier. Best of all, the milk will taste delicious and the cream to die for. (I add extra cream to my milk and it’s as good as ice cream.)

Safety First!

Still, you can’t just drink raw milk from anywhere. You really really need to do your homework. Tainted milk can contain pathogens such as brucella, listeria, and invasive E. coli. Raw milk must come from a trusted source, from a dairy committed to cleanliness, protocol, and animal welfare.

How do you identify a trustworthy source of fresh dairy? What I have to do, as with all animal products, is get in my car and drive. I go to local butcher shops, farmers markets, and farms, and meet the people who make my dinners possible. When I find a rancher or farmer who talks about caring for animals in ways that make me think he or she actually gives a damn, I know I’ve found someone who deserves my money.

Excerpts from Dr. Shanahan’s book Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food

and from Food Rules: A Doctor’s Guide to Healthy Eating

Copyright 2008, 2010, Catherine Shanahan, MD and Luke Shanahan, MFA

[ii] The Milk Book: The Milk of Human Kindness is Not Pasteurized. William Campbell Douglass II, MD. Rhino Publishing 2005.

[iii] Continuous Thermal Processing of Foods: Pasteurization and Uht. Heppell NJ. Springer 2000 P194

[iv] Dr. North and the Kansas City Newspaper War: Public Health Advocacy Collides with Main Street Respectability. Kovarik B. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (72nd, Washington, DC, August 10-13, 1989) accessed online dec 27, 2007 at www.radford.edu/wkovarik/papers/aej98.html

[v] The Milk Book: The Milk of Human Kindness is Not Pasteurized. William Campbell Douglass II, MD. Rhino Publishing 2005.

[vi] The Milk Book: The Milk of Human Kindness is Not Pasteurized. William Campbell Douglass II, MD. Rhino Publishing 2005. p11.

[vii] Modificiations in milk proteins induced by heat treatment and homogenization and their influence on susceptibility to proteolysis. Garcia-Risco MR. International Dairy Journal 12 (2002) 679-688.

[viii] Soluble, dialyzable and ionic calcium in raw and processed skim milk, whole milk and spinach. Reykdal O. Journal of Food Science 56 3, pp. 864–866. 1991

[ix] Calcium bioavailability in human milk, cow milk and infant formulas—comparison between dialysis and solubility methods Roig MJ. Food Chemistry Vol 65, Issue 3, P353-357.

[x] Carbonylation of milk powder proteins as a consequence of processing conditions François Fenaille. Proteomics Vol 5 Issue 12 pp3097-3104

[xi] Modificiations in milk proteins induced by heat treatment and homogenization and their influence on susceptibility to proteolysis. Garcia-Risco MR. International Dairy Journal 12 (2002) 679-688.

[xii] Chemistry And Safety of Acrylamide In Food, Friedman M. p141. Springer 2005

[xiii] Dietary Fat Requirements in Health and Development, Thomas H Applewhite, American Oil Chemists Society 1988 p30

[xiv] Conjugated linoleic acid content of milk from cows fed different diets, J Dairy Sci. 1999 Oct;82(10):2146-56.

My interview from earlier this month was featured on Our Hen House‘s podcast this weekend. We talked about Torah teachings about compassion for animals, how well Judaism and vegetarianism mesh together, kosher slaughter, the new Jewish food movement, and vegan versions of traditional Jewish foods.

To listen to the podcast, click here. My in-depth interview starts about a third of the way into the podcast. I encourage this blog’s readers to listen to the whole interview, but here’s an excerpt:

There is a lot of foundation for compassion for animals and vegetarianism and veganism in the Jewish faith. And I feel proud to be Jewish knowing that Judaism is one of the forebears of animal welfare in Western civilization.

And I feel that my views on whether you want to call it animal rights, animal welfare, animal protection, what have you, can really be summed up by a Jewish term, it’s in Hebrew, called tza’ar ba’alei chayim, which means unnecessary animal suffering. That is, we should prevent causing animals any unnecessary suffering.

How you interpret that could be deemed, on the one hand, as treating animals humanely with animal welfare and just trying to minimize their pain. Or it can be, in my case, saying that if we don’t need animals for meat or for other ways in which they are exploited, we’re better off without meat and without circuses and rodeos and leather and fur, etc. So if that kind of animal use is unnecessary and suffering is inherent in causing those products to be produced, then, in my mind, it’s tza’ar ba’alei chayim, or unnecessary animal suffering.

Last week, YNet reported that Israel’s Knesset is considering using free-range eggs in its on-site eateries. YNet noted:

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin is considering banning the use of factory-farmed eggs at the parliament’s eateries and instructing them to use free-range and organic eggs instead ….

The Knesset speaker told Anonymous [an Israeli animal rights group] that he has instructed Dan Landau, the Knesset’s director-general, to check whether the change to free-range eggs can be made during the signing of the next contract with the owner of the parliament’s eateries.

While Rivlin seems well-intentioned, it’s debatable whether free-range eggs are substantially less cruelly produced than conventional eggs from hens in battery cages. In the U.S., labels like “free-range” are poorly defined, and well-intentioned consumers aren’t necessarily buying what they think they are. If a huge shed houses thousands of birds in tight quarters and has a tiny door that allows a small fraction of the birds access to an outdoor fenced-in area, an American egg producer can label eggs from those birds as “free-range.” This might be better than the horror of battery cages, but I avoid eating all eggs because a seemingly better alternative isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I didn’t want to assume that the situation was identical in Israel, so Tel Aviv–based Pete Cohon (the founder of VeggieJews) referred me to more information. I don’t know with certainty how reliable information from the Israeli animal rights group Shevi is, but it’s the best source that I’m currently aware of.

Shevi notes that in Israel, regardless of whether eggs come from “free-range” birds or birds in battery cages, the birds are still subject to appalling abuses. Hens have their sensitive beaks seared off with hot blades (i.e., debeaking), and male chicks, who cannot lay eggs, are typically killed right after birth. Hens are slaughtered when their egg production declines to the point where it’s no longer profitable and are generally slaughtered in the same conditions as birds in the conventional egg industry. Shevi adds:

The hens are genetically bred to lay as many as 300 eggs per year instead of the 12-20 that they would naturally lay. In addition, the eggs they are bred to lay are larger than the tube that the eggs go through in their bodies, so each laying is accompanied by pain and pressure being applied to their inner-organs around the tube to the extent that sometimes some of their inner organs fall out of their body.

Shevi concludes, “The attempt to compare between the types of ways to produce eggs and to conclude to buy free-range eggs because the ‘regular’ techniques are too cruel is a failed attempt, because the decision of whether or not to buy free-range eggs is a decision in and of itself. … [W]e can be vegan and not have to choose between the lesser of the evils and which hens suffer more.”

A couple of months ago, I noted that the office of Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger in Israel had released an encouraging statement that seemed to mark the end of Israel’s imports of meat from animals killed by shackling and hoisting in South America. (The cruel slaughter method is no longer used in Israel or the U.S.) I was, however, skeptical because a similar forward-looking statement in 2008 was never enforced. This time around, it looks like the Chief Rabbinate’s plan will be enacted.

On June 18, Haaretz reported that “by 2011 the Chief Rabbinate will no longer certify [as kosher] meat from slaughterhouses that use shackle-and-hoist – a controversial method employed in almost all South American kosher slaughterhouses, which provide 80 percent of all the meat imported into Israel.” This is a major step forward, both because it means action will be taken within the next half-year and because business considerations (e.g., the fact that an overwhelming majority of Israel’s imported meat comes from the slaughterhouses in question) will not be allowed to determine what’s right.

This decision has far-reaching implications. Avi Blumenthal, assistant to Rabbi Metzger, said, “The chief rabbi believes this method is primitive and causes unnecessary pain and anguish to the animals. If the meat factories switch to more humane, kosher methods, we will certify their meat.” The Chief Rabbinate doesn’t have the authority to stop imports of the meat into Israel. Rather, it is specifically saying that it will not certify the meat as kosher because of the way animals are treated.

All too often in recent years, kosher certification authorities have contended that tza’ar ba’alei chayim (unnecessary animal suffering) is a distinct issue from kashrut and does not invalidate the kosher status of meat. In this situation, a hechsher is actually being revoked because of tza’ar ba’alei chayim (or perhaps the negative publicity it has caused), which means that it is not an independent consideration.

In the past, the kosher certification establishment has claimed that a statement like “Cruelty to animals means that meat from those animals is not kosher” is false. I have no rabbinic authority, but a logical extension of this new decision seems to make that statement true.

Haaretz quoted Rabbi Michael Melchior, the Danish-born former chief Orthodox rabbi of Norway, as saying that “lessening an animal’s suffering is a religious requirement from the Torah – just like the kosher requirement itself.”

While video footage of shackling and hoisting is appalling in its own right, the bigger controversy here is that the Chief Rabbinate of Israel agreed to end shackling and hoisting in 2008 following a similar PETA investigation. In Popper’s article, various parties seemed more interested in pointing fingers as to why shackling and hoisting had not yet been phased out than taking responsibility and implementing change.

On Thursday, YNet reported that the office of Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger has responded by saying:

The Rabbinate recently convened all the meat importers in Israel and notified them that they will no longer be allowed to import meat slaughtered using this method, and that the plants must switch to the boxing method, which minimizes animal suffering. Currently, following a period of adjustment in which the slaughterhouses made arrangements to carry out the new orders, the Rabbinate is prepared to enforce the new directive.

This new statement seems encouraging, but then again, so did the one in 2008.

When Alan Glustoff founded 5 Spoke Creamery in 2005, he put his years as a dairy technologist to work. Glustoff set out to make artisanal kosher cheeses that rivaled their non-kosher counterparts, and his success speaks for itself.  Today, 5 Spoke Creamery’s Kof-K certified cheeses are served in the finest non-kosher restaurants (including Per Se), sold in leading specialty food stores (like Zabar’s and Murray’s), and touted in major food publications (from Bon Appétit to Epicurious).

What makes Five Spoke Creamery’s cheeses different is that they are handmade from the raw milk of grass-fed Holstein cows that are free of pesticides and hormones. Because grass-fed cows get to roam, picking and choosing from a variety of grasses, herbs, flowers and weeds, raw milk from a grass-fed cow has a depth of flavor that cannot be duplicated.

In case you are wondering, raw milk cheeses are perfectly safe. They are made from unpastuerized milk and follow state laws requiring a minimum of 60 days for aging which eliminates pathogenic bacteria. In fact, the safety record for raw milk cheeses span many centuries, and over 70% of European cheeses are made from raw milk.

Not only are Five Spoke Creamery’s cheeses creamier and more flavorful than cheeses made from pasteurized milk, also they offer numerous health benefits that are inherent to raw milk, including:

•    Better digestion – Only raw milk keeps the enzyme phosphataze intact, which allows the body to absorb greater amounts of calcium and to digest lactose.
•    Stronger immune system - Raw milk has all the beneficial bacteria and lactic acids, which implant in the intestines and contribute to a stronger immune system.
•    Fighting allergies – Raw milk has a cortisone-like factor present in the cream, which aids in combating allergies.
•    The right fats - Grass fed, raw milk cheeses are one of the few foods that contain a perfect balance of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats, a ratio ideal for your health.
•    Cancer protection - Grass fed, raw milk cheeses are very high in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which is among the most potent cancer fighters found in all foods.

On Sunday afternoon, April 25th, you’ll have an opportunity to learn more about raw milk cheeses and enjoy a sampling of delicious 5 Spoke Creamery cheeses at Say Cheese: An Introduction to Artisanal Kosher Cheeses with Alan Glustoff. The Upper West Side event, which is $72 (tax deductible), is part of Limmud Across NY:  A Day of Learning to Benefit Limmud NY. For further information or to register, go to www.limmudny.org/LimmudAcrossNY.

Photo courtesy of Kirk Anderson

It’s a resplendent Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles, that rare smog-free day. You decide to charbroil some burgers for lunch. You creek open the lid of your backyard grill and…bzzZZZzzzz!  A bee-hive! In ten seconds flat, you’ve hightailed it back into the house, slammed the door, and Googled “exterminator.”

Best to kill those sons-a-beeswax before they swarm, right? Wrong!

Slow your roll. Have a heart. And call Kirk Anderson at the Bee Rescue Hotline.

For a fee, Anderson, 61, a sort of bee Svengali in the City of Angels, will not only remove your unwanted bees, he’ll find them an adopted home through Backward Beekeepers, the organization of small-scale organic urban beekeepers that rely on sustainable, natural practices to keep their bees thriving.

“I’ve had people call me who’ve got bees in their dryer ducts,” said Anderson of the hotline, which receives up to 10 calls a day. “I’ve taken bees out of five-gallon paint cans, suitcases, chests of drawers, car glove boxes.”

At a recent Backward Beekeeper monthly meeting, Anderson held court like the Queen Bee—that is, if she sported Catfish Hunter’s mustache and wielded Yogi Berra’s wit.

Click here to see the rest of the article