*CHODOSH BULLETIN-17 JUL 12* *From the Guide to Chodosh-Y. Herman*
*Chodosh telephone Hot Line 718-305-5133, email *yher...@earthlink.net PROGRESS OF THE HARVEST OF THE CHODOSH CROPS-UPDATE The US Department of Agriculture ( USDA) releases their weekly report on crop progress on Monday of each week. The latest report indicates that the harvest of oats is well on the way. Our estimated oats packing cutoff date for oats is Jul 21, one week earlier than normal. The latest report does not mention any harvest of spring wheat or barley. We are quite certain that the harvest of these crops must also on the way by now and should be reported by the next weekly update from the USDA. Pending future reports, our preliminary estimate for spring wheat Chodosh date is Aug 2, and barley Aug 7. These dates refer to the earliest packing date when Chodosh may start to appear in manufactured items. These tentative dates should finalized in the next 1-2 weeks. **************************************************** FOLLOWING AS OF 11 JUL 12 CORRECTION ON THE OATS SITUATION I had stated on several occasions that according to the crop progress reports issued by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), about 2 days before pesach 55% of the oats crop was already planted. Therefore, if one holds that crops that took root 2 days before pesach are Yoshon (3 days before the second day of pesach), then this year oats grown in the US would be majority Yoshon. However, recently I spoke to a respected mashgiach, who is more knowledgeable about practices out in the fields than I am. He pointed out that these data issued by the USDA have a significant statistical error margin, possibly more than 5%. Therefore, if the USDA had indicated that 65% of the crop was planted before pesach, he would have full confidence that oats would be mostly Yoshon (if you hold the 3-day-before the second day of pesach opinion.) However, 55% is so close to 50%, that it is not at all certain that such a small margin over 50% is significant. The best one can say is that there is a sofek of being mostly Yoshon (according to the 3-day opinion.) This is the revised advice being offered by the Guide to Chodosh. SPECIFIC BRANDS OF OATS CEREALS The O-U had estimated that at least up to a packing date of Sept 15, all oats cereals made be General Mills, Quaker and Malt-O-Meal use Yoshon oats. **************************************************************** THE EMAIL MAILING LIST Those who have access to email can have important corrections and updates sent to their email address automatically. To subscribe to this free service send a blank email message to: chodosh-subscr...@jif.org.il <chodosh-subscr...@jif.org.il> Those who have subscribed last year to the email distribution list do not need to renew this email subscription. *********************************************** To send an E mail message to the Guide, please address it to: yher...@earthlink.net. Before you discontinue using an E-mail service, please unsubscribe from this list by sending a message to: chodosh-unsubscr...@jif.org.il. Then if you wish to resume receiving these messages from your new service, send a message to: chodosh-subscr...@jif.org.il <chodosh-subscr...@jif.org.il>. CAUTION: Some new anti-spam filters require senders to respond to a challenge in order for their E mail to be received. This E mail distribution list can not provide such responses. Other filters eliminate all mass mailings such as this one. If you are using such filters, be sure to put these messages on the allowed list of your filter, otherwise you will not receive the updates. __________________________________________ Project Chodosh is an independent activity, not affiliated with any movement or organization. We thank the Jewish Internet Fund (JIF) for allowing us to use their E mail distribution services. The JIF provides free email and web hosting to Jewish education and outreach organizations. We also thank the sites moruda.com and sefer.org for allowing the public to use E mail to request copies from their facitlites of the Guides to Chodosh and the Mashgichim.