Bulletin from the Guide to Chodosh
CHODOSH BULLETIN-19 SEPT 10 From the Guide to Chodosh-Y. Herman Chodosh telephone Hot Line 718-305-5133, email yher...@yahoo.com CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS TO THE NEW GUIDE The following are additions and corrections to this first issue of the Guide to Chodosh. The items added since the last bulletin are marked at the start with “**”. CRC Hashgochos On page 17 of the Guide it mistakenly states that their hashgocho policies are not known. In fact they are known, as detailed in Preface A.2, page 4-5. Section 4.1 Baked Products ** Kemach. All cookies, snackers, crackers are Yoshon, even whole wheat and graham, at least until malt becomes a problem after Dec. Bread sticks are Yoshon including the malt. Flat breads should be Yoshon at least up to the purchase date of Oct 15. Codes to be supplied later. ** Liebers cookies, crackers and snackers made in the USA without oats are Yoshon at least until malt becomes a problem after Dec. Section 4.2 Pretzels ** WARNING: Honey-wheat pretzels (all brands) use whole wheat flour that may be Chodosh after a packing date of Aug 9. No codes known at this time. Section 5 Noodles and Pasta ** America’s Choice noodles and pasta the code is Aug 16 2012 (2 years after packing.) ** Kemach egg noodles are Yoshon even without a Yoshon label until Jan 1. After that only with a Yoshon label. ** Shoprite noodles and pasta code has changed. It is now 2 years after packing. The Chodosh code should be Aug 16 2012. Section 6 Flour ** Dependable all purpose and whole wheat flour sold in groceries in 5, 6 or 7 pound bags are Yoshon if there is a Yoshon stamp on the package. ** Kemach-All Kemach flour sold in groceries, all purpose, whole wheat and high gluten all use winter wheat that is Yoshon. The whole wheat flour does not contain any malt. The other flours do contain malt that could be Chodosh after December. Code to be supplied later. Section 7.1 Barley ** Gefen barley will be Yoshon the entire season, under the hashgocho of Rabbi Friedman. His name does not appear on the package. Section 7.2 Bread crumbs, matzo meal ** Kemach bread crumbs in 50 pound bags and matzo meal in 25 pound bags are Yoshon. Section 8.1 General Mills cereals using oats, the oats will be Yoshon at least up to the packaging date of Oct 15. Therefore, when using the table in the Guide for General Mills cereals, use the earlier wheat Chodosh date, not the oats. The package code for Nestle cereals sold in Israel is still not known. ** Kemach cereals. The following use only winter wheat and are Yoshon, at least until the malt becomes a problem after December. Whole Wheat Flakes, Raisin Bran and Bran Flakes, Cocoa Munchies, Choco Chippers. ** Quaker instant oats, code is now in transition. Some packages on shelves still have the old code which is 540 days after packing. Some of the new production already use the new code of 360 days. Some guidance in the unavoidable confusion: new packages of Cinnamon Spice, Apples and Cinnamon and Maple and Brown Sugar should use the new code. In addition all boxes with the notation “New Hardier Texture” or when the ingredient state 25% less sugar” all are using 360 days. Section 9.1 Frozen and packaged foods ** Kemach pie crusts, graham and chocolate graham are Yoshon at least until the malt becomes a problem after Dec. ** Mendelson pizzas Yoshon also under the hashgocho of the O-U (the O-U hashgocho covers the malt also.) ** Smackin Good products are all Yoshon under the hashgocho of Rabbi Weissmandl. ** Unger frozen pie shells in 3, 6 and 9 inch sizes have a Chodosh code of 10188 (10=year, 188=day of the year). If no code is visible, then all items in the store by Aug 24 are probably still Yoshon. Callers to the Hot Line report that some packages do not have any code on them. These can not be recommended as Yoshon. Section 11. On page 47 at the bottom of the left-hand column it infers that Caravan Dough conditioner could be a Chodosh problem. In fact, at the top of that column it states that this product is available under hashgocho of the CRC as Yoshon. ** Dependable products: Dependable brand bakery flour Chodosh code AL245 (245 day of the year). General Mills flours Chodosh date Aug 15 10. Bay State Bouncer flour Yoshon under hashgocho of the O-U. ConAgra flour Yoshon under the hashgocho of the Kof-K. Masbia bread crumbs are made in Israel and are Yoshon. Farina Chodosh code Aug 1 10. Oatmeal Chodosh code Aug 1 10. Bear Stewarts muffin and muffin mixes Chodosh code Sept 2 2010. Following Yoshon until further notice: Dependable and Masbia brand pasta, noodles and egg barley, also wraps. Section 12.1.1 Catering and takeout (New York City area) **Meisners and Zami in Brooklyn, Yoshon under the hashgocho of Rabbi Nesanel Sommer of Monsey. (Malt is not checked. That may be a problem after Dec.) * THE NEW GUIDE TO CHODOSH READY FOR DOWNLOAD BY EMAIL You can download the new Guide, as usual, by sending an email
Update from the Guide to Chodosh
UPDATE FROM THE GUIDE TO CHODOSH NEWS AS OF SEPT 15 03 CORRECTION TO THE GUIDE The Guide has not yet been mailed out and there is already a correction thanks to an alert person who called the Hot Line to provide me with new contacts at the company in question: Natural Ovens breads are all Chodosh at this time, with the exception of the Best Burger Buns. PDF VERSIONS OF THE GUIDE As mentioned below from my earlier announcement, I offered to make the PDF version of the Guide available to all those who request it by E mail. I have since received a very large number of such requests. It is not possible for me to respond to all of those using the old manual one-by-one response approach I used last year. Meanwhile, someone is kind enough to be working on an approach so that people should be able to request the PDF version without the need for my direct intervention, the way that you can already request the text version. I have saved all the existing requests for the PDF report without answering them. I hope to have the auto-response approach working within a day of two. I will send out a new message when it will be available. Meanwhile I am asking that you please excuse the delay. WHY THE GUIDE DOES NOT HAVE A WEB PAGE ON THE INTERNET Last week I sent out a message which indicated that I am honoring a psak halacha not to use Web pages on the Internet. Several people have responded to that with varying levels of incredulousness. Some people asked that I discuss the reasonability of such a psak. I do not have the qualifications, ability, or time to enter into such discussions. The approach of the Guide over all of the years has been that we do not force any psak halacha on anyone else. Therefore we have always presented Chodosh-related facts and urged the reader to ask his and her own halachic questions. In this case, years ago I accepted, bli neder, on myself the psak not to use any Web pages for the Chodosh project. I hope to continue passing Chodosh-Yoshon related information to the interested public as in the past, within the constraints inferred by this psak. NEWS AS OF SEPT 12 03 The first issue of the Guide to Chodosh has gone to the printer. It is expected back on Monday or Tuesday, Sept 15 or 16. It will be mailed out to the local distributors and paid subscribers as soon as possible thereafter. Meanwhile, we have prepared two versions of this Guide to be available by E mail, at no charge to your. One is a text only version that any E mail reader can read. The other is a PDF file that can only be read by the Adobe PDF reader program. This years Guide has the first major change of format in the 31 years of its publication. We have assigned one of 5 categories to each items listed in the Guide, indicated by the Hebrew letters aleph, beis, gimmel, daledand ches. These are measures of the reliability of the claim to Yoshon and the ease of finding the Yoshon item in the stores. These symbols work fine in the printed and PDF versions of the Guide. However, they are lost, replaced by ?in the text only version. To order the text only version to be sent to you automatically, send an E mail message to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the message type: Get Guide.txt Make sure you capitalize as shown. DO NOT send this request to the yherman E mail address. To order the PDF version, send an E mail message to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] In the subject line, state that your are requesting the PDF file. We will try to send this file to you as an attachment by return E mail as soon as possible. Meanwhile we plan to disseminate information on a frequent basis via E mail and news recordings on the voice Hot Line (845-356-5743). If you find the frequent E mails annoying, you may unsubscribe from the E mail list, as described below. ** NEW ADDRESS FOR ORDERING THE GUIDE TO CHODOSH Those who wish to order the 3 printed issues of the Guide to be printed through the season should send a check for $15 to our new address. (This address is only for subscription-related matters.) Project Chodosh subscriptions, PO Box 297279, Brooklyn, NY 11229. Our current preliminary date estimates follow: Freshly baked products in local bakeries such as breads, challehs, rolls, bagels probably Chodosh starting: Sept 1 in the East and Far West, Aug 15 in the Mid West. Packaged foods containing wheat, other than pasta: Probably Yoshon if packed before Aug 15. Probably Yoshon if purchased up to Sept 5. After that package codes have to be used. Packaged pasta probably safe if packed before Sept 15, probably safe to purchase up to Oct 6. After that package codes have to be used. Foods containing oats probably safe if packed up to Sept 23, probably safe to purchase
Chodosh Bulletin-Season is about to start
Chodosh Bulletin 29 Jul 03 The new Chodosh season has officially begun with the announcement from the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that as of Jul 27 03, 20% of the US oats crop has been harvested. This means, that in theory, Chodosh oats could be entering our newly produced food at any time now. However, it is hard to gage the significance of this because only 1/3 of the oats used in the US is domestically grown. Most comes from Canada where the harvest is much later, mostly starting in September. In the past we have found that some US companies do use domestic oats. These do tend to have early Chodosh dates. However many major ones use Canadian oats with later Chodosh dates. Company specific information will not be available for at least an other 2-4 weeks. Based on crop progress reported by the USDA, we expect spring wheat and barley harvest to begin within the next 14 days. Our updated estimates on the fraction of Chodosh in next years crops is a follows: Hard red spring wheat (breads, chalehs, rolls, pizza, some cereals) 76% Chodosh. Oats 68% Chodosh. Barley 79% Chodosh. Durum spring wheat (noodles and other pasta) close to 100% Chodosh, the exact number can not be calculated accurately. We hope to publish the first issue of the Guide soon after the start of September. The Guide is undergoing a major format revision, in an attempt to make it more user friendly. As in the past, versions of the new Guide will be made available free of charge to be requested by E mail. However, with the significant format change, it is not clear now how the new format will affect the E mail distribution of the Guide. To order printed copies of the Guide to be sent to you by US mail, send a check for $15 for the three issues per year. Make the check out to Project Chodosh. Mail it with your name, address including zip and apartment number, as well as your phone number to: Project Chodosh Subscriptions, PO Box 297279, Brooklyn, NY 11229-7279.
