Monday, March 26, 2007
Passover Makes Rabbi Into Kosher Cop
Rabbi Shalom Adler slips a thin net over his short red hair and black yarmulke. Another over his bushy beard. He pops in bright orange earplugs. A pair of bulky protective goggles cover his wire-framed spectacles.
Inspector Rabbi is now in service.
For the past several weeks, Adler, co-director of the Chabad of Pinellas County, has brought his rabbinical knowledge of Jewish dietary law to the Tropicana plant in Bradenton.
Adler, who works for the Organized Kosher certification company, inspects the production of a special run of kosher-for-Passover orange juice.
Year-round, most of Tropicana's products meet kosher standards. But to prepare for the eight-day Passover holiday, which begins April 2, the company takes it kosherization process several steps further, designating two separate assembly lines just for production of the juice.
Tropicana's moves underscore a broader push in the food industry to make more kosher foods available, particularly kosher-for-Passover varieties.
A decade ago there were about 60,000 kosher products available in supermarkets; today it's more than 100,000, reports Lubicom Marketing Consulting, a food industry tracker in Brooklyn, N.Y., that publishes the weekly newsletter Kosher Today.
Industry types attribute the surge in kosher goods to the outgrowth of the Orthodox Jewish community in the United States beyond the traditional base of New York in addition to a more health-conscious non-Jewish consumer base embracing kosher foods for a perceived nutritional benefit.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/26/Business/Passover_makes_rabbi_.shtml
Rabbi Shalom Adler slips a thin net over his short red hair and black yarmulke. Another over his bushy beard. He pops in bright orange earplugs. A pair of bulky protective goggles cover his wire-framed spectacles.
Inspector Rabbi is now in service.
For the past several weeks, Adler, co-director of the Chabad of Pinellas County, has brought his rabbinical knowledge of Jewish dietary law to the Tropicana plant in Bradenton.
Adler, who works for the Organized Kosher certification company, inspects the production of a special run of kosher-for-Passover orange juice.
Year-round, most of Tropicana's products meet kosher standards. But to prepare for the eight-day Passover holiday, which begins April 2, the company takes it kosherization process several steps further, designating two separate assembly lines just for production of the juice.
Tropicana's moves underscore a broader push in the food industry to make more kosher foods available, particularly kosher-for-Passover varieties.
A decade ago there were about 60,000 kosher products available in supermarkets; today it's more than 100,000, reports Lubicom Marketing Consulting, a food industry tracker in Brooklyn, N.Y., that publishes the weekly newsletter Kosher Today.
Industry types attribute the surge in kosher goods to the outgrowth of the Orthodox Jewish community in the United States beyond the traditional base of New York in addition to a more health-conscious non-Jewish consumer base embracing kosher foods for a perceived nutritional benefit.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/26/Business/Passover_makes_rabbi_.shtml
Comments:
Post a Comment
