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Beverages & Drink Mixes
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Keeping it kosher in Sunnyside
SUNNYSIDE — The way Rabbi Yitzchok Gallor walks through Sunnyside’s Valley Processing plant, he easily could be mistaken for a manager. He checks temperatures, checks the plant’s equipment and points out any inconsistencies to the company’s owners.
While Gallor is not an employee of Valley Processing, he could be called its most important customer. He works for the Orthodox Union, an organization based in New York that oversees the production of kosher products.
The agency sends rabbis like Gallor to different processing plants all over the world to give various foods the kosher seal of approval — in this case, the company’s symbol of a U inside a circle.
Valley Processing has spent nearly nine years trying to make the switch to producing entirely kosher products as it pursues a growing market demand.
Plant owner Mary Ann Bliesner said most of the plant’s annual production of 1 million gallons of grape juice concentrate are kosher, with the exception of about 30,000 gallons. The other fruit products the company produces, such as apple, pear and cranberry juice concentrate, are all kosher.
Bliesner said the company decided to go kosher because she thinks it will open new markets for its products, especially on the East Coast where there’s a larger Jewish population.
Gallor said kosher products are gaining in popularity, with the market increasing by at least 10 percent annually. He said it’s not just Jews who are buying kosher, as many others have learned to look for kosher symbols on food to identify high quality.
He said among those keeping kosher are Muslims, Seventh-day Adventists and many vegetarians.
But ensuring something follows Jewish dietary laws is a long, detailed process.
Two rabbis are assigned to Valley Processing. Together they alternate working 12-hour shifts so there always is a rabbi on hand.
Rabbi Avrohom Gallor is Gallor’s 28-year-old son, and he’s been working with his father for six years. He said the rabbis’ biggest concerns are cleanliness, sanitation and “making sure the product is pure.”
He said because Valley Processing now is processing grape products, the rabbis have to take more care. He said because grape juice is so closely related to wine, which is special because of its spiritual significance, they must carefully watch the process to make sure there is no way the juice they deem kosher can ever be made into wine.
The trick to that is heating the juice slurry to a point where the enzymes that cause fermentation are destroyed.
Long before the juice hits the processing equipment, the plant must be thoroughly cleaned and kosherized. The younger Gallor explained that because metal equipment is porous and can collect impurities, it must be super-heated to open the pores for cleaning.
Once everything has been kosherized, one of the main responsibilities of the rabbis is making sure everything stays kosher. That means when equipment breaks, any replacement parts must be properly sanitized before they can be put to work.
“So we avoid mix-ups,” Avrohom Gallor said
That means the rabbis also need an intimate knowledge of the plant’s workings. During a recent tour of the Sunnyside plant, the younger Gallor pointed to the maze of pipes overhead and said he knows what is flowing through each of them at any given time.
The rabbis spend so much time at the plant during the fall that there is a sukkah on-site. A sukkah is a simple building with a roof built from branches that is used during Sukkot, a Jewish holiday that begins five days after Yom Kippur.
Bliesner said she used to bring in a sukkah every year for the rabbis, but after several years she figured it would be easier to build one and leave it up all year.
Ensuring that 1 million gallons of grape juice concentrate leaves the plant kosher is a big responsibility for the rabbis.
The elder Gallor joked that his greatest worry is that when he dies he’s going to have some explaining to do at the pearly gates. He worries that he might miss something that would allow nonkosher juice to slip through.
“I am human,” he said with a smile.
Story by Elena Olmstead in the Tri-City (Washington) Herald. Reprinted with permission.
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Monday, December 31, 2007
It’s Cott to Be Good if the Beverage is OU Kosher
Today’s consumer is flooded with beverage choices. Is it that standard refreshing cola, tart lemon-lime or that sweet orange-flavored soda you are looking for? Perhaps it’s the New-Age fortified, vitamin-enriched waters or a sports drink. The choices are endless. However, the one word most consumers recognize about a beverage is if it’s “kosher.” Kosher is also used as a term indicating “its high quality!”
Since I’m from the South, I have often heard “kosher” as an expression validating one’s approval of something, more so than its biblical expression of Godly approval. A person would say, “Something is just not kosher about this,” meaning its integrity was questionable. Also coming from the South, I’ve had the benefit and pleasure of working for one of the region’s well-known beverage companies, Cott Beverages and RC Cola.
I’ve been blessed with the opportunity of working alongside some of the best flavor chemists in the industry, people like Dr. Bill Miller, Martha Jones, Bill Bruner, Jimmy McKinstry, Prem Virmani, Richard Nachreiner and David Ragland. They taught me the importance of quality in everything I do. In the 26 years I’ve been in the industry, I’ve worked in Quality Control and Research & Development as well as in other key areas. Product quality has always been the driving force of innovation. Beverage formulas were not just flavored waters with sugar. They represented the art of combining ingredients into a great tasting beverage, so that wherever you might be when you purchased and consumed the beverage, it would always taste the same.
Product quality is the most important aspect of beverage manufacturing and distribution. From the package to the pallet, we work hard to deliver the same great, high quality and consistent taste for consumers whether they are in New York, Miami or Los Angeles!
So how is such a process possible when there are thousands of ingredients available? The secret is in being kosher certified. Kosher certified ingredients represent the best ingredients with added quality assurance.
After years of working in the laboratory and learning all about beverages, my education continued into the area of beverage formulations. I took on the responsibility of preparing and submitting kosher applications so that each beverage formula would be kosher certified through the Orthodox Union. In this role, I learned that there were thousands of flavors and ingredients available for use in food and beverages, all of which were kosher certified. That again meant integrity and quality. This process was indeed a paper trail, involving every detail required for formula certification.
Tasks such as this meant there had to be a team willing to work closely together while being miles apart. I found such a team when working with Rabbi Menachem Genack and Rabbi Yermia Indich, as well as with their extended staffs. All “i’s” were dotted and “t’s” crossed to assure that when the OU symbol appeared on our product labels we had covered the bases and it meant it had to be good!
I’ve since moved to a different area of equal importance – Regulatory Affairs. Not only must we develop a product that’s pleasing and refreshing to drink, we must also be certain of its compliance with beverage regulations. The Food and Drug Administration provides guidelines for what is acceptable for human consumption and how beverages may be presented to the consumer.
Behind the scenes we have the Regulatory Compliance group working to merge taste and appearances into a government-regulated and approved product. At this time the OU symbol is on the package and represents the integrity of each step of the development and manufacturing process.
Yet, the story doesn’t end there. International visitors come to America and taste some delicious, refreshing beverages and want these beverage types to be produced in their country too. So we go back to the flavor chemist and start the development process over for each country. There are challenges in the innovation of flavor compositions because differences in cultures may influence the development of beverage formulas. It can be a challenge to provide a similar beverage consumed and enjoyed while in the United States to taste exactly the same as when produced in a foreign country. Local government regulations must be observed and many countries have their own regulations which may be different from the regulations in America. In an effort to meet the demand of a particular market while also following the requirements set by a government authority, it may be necessary to slightly alter the original beverage formulation. The teamwork we share with the Orthodox Union is what ultimately helps us get the job done and provide customers around the world with great tasting beverages!
Together we provide kosher approved products that are of the highest quality, while meeting the requirements mandated by each country.
Kathryn Bundy is a regulatory analyst for Cott Beverages.
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Thursday, January 13, 2005
Not a Bolt from the Blue: Bolthouse Farms
Bolthouse Farms is a fourth generation family farm located in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley. After more than 85 years of farming and distributing premium fresh produce, we began production
on a new line of premium fruit and vegetable juices in the spring of 2003. The company constructed a state-ofthe-art bottling facility to ensure that the juice is the safest and best tasting available.
Every batch of Bolthouse Farms juice is taste tested and quality inspected before it is released. Different pasteurization parameters are used, depending on the ingredients, to maximize flavor and nutritional value. Our patented cold-aseptic bottling process, unlike most processes, actually makes the bottles in a sterile environment
just moments before they are filled. The room qualifies as a Class 100 Clean Room, ensuring that it is almost completely devoid of everything other than sterile air. Once made, the bottles are filled and capped within the clean room, ensuring that the product is as safe
inside the bottle as it was only seconds after it was flashpasteurized.
The benefit of all this is superior food safety, extra long shelf life, unmatched flavor and enhanced nutritional value.
When striving to produce the finest beverages in the world, it is important to us to be associated with other organizations with similar values. That’s why when it came time to kosher certify our new line of premium juices, we naturally gravitated toward our long-standing
relationship with the Orthodox Union. For many years our fresh carrots have been certified by this worldwide recognized symbol of premier quality. We continue to work very hard to ensure that all Bolthouse Farms products both qualify for and wear the OU symbol. As our portfolio of premium products continues to grow, so will
our relationship with the Orthodox Union. We have seen the results of this kosher program and are confident that OU certification is making a positive impact on our business.
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