URGENT BULLETIN FROM THE GUIDE TO CHODOSH!

[Y. Herman]

BULLETIN FROM THE GUIDE TO CHODOSH



10 Mar 04

URGENT  WARNING ON YOSHON FLOUR



Some brands of breads, chalehs, rolls that were Yoshon up to now, may 
suddenly be Chodosh. Read on&



Yoshon bakeries, pizza shops and other producers of Yoshon baked products 
use flour produced and stored from the end of last summer, before Chodosh 
wheat became available. In the Metropolitan New York area, such flour is 
produced by several major milling companies. These companies store the 
milled flour at their factory site and then ship the flour bags to several 
wholesale distributors who, in turn, ship the flour to the local bakeries. 
Some batches of flour from one of these mills have been found to be worm 
infested. As a result, some bakeries that do not have other sources of 
Yoshon flour have stopped producing Yoshon baked products until the end of 
the season, until pesach. We have not heard of any worm problems with any 
other mills that produce Yoshon flour. Those who do use the other flours 
will continue to produce Yoshon as before.



The first major baker to announce the cessation of Yoshon production is 
known under various names as Korn, Stern, Kohen and the 15th Ave Food Corp. 
Until pesach, all breads, chalehs, rolls and similar items under the Korn 
and the other labels will be Chodosh. However, the following cakes will 
still remain Yoshon: marble, sponge, seven layer, roll and decorated cakes. 
This also applies to the Lakewood Heimishe Bake Shop that uses Korn 
products. In addition, as a result of this, Gruenebaums Bakery that has 
outlets in Manhattan, Monsey, Teaneck and elsewhere warned that they may 
run out of Yoshon within the next week or so. If they do not secure other 
supplies of Yoshon flour, then signs will be posted in all stores warning 
that some products are Chodosh.



Due to the urgency of this matter and the short time till pesach, we do not 
have the time to check with each individual baker to see where their supply 
of flour is from and whether they will stop using Yoshon flour due to 
potential worm problems. Each consumer is urged to check with their local 
baker on this matter to see if they can continue to produce Yoshon. Bakers 
are urged to post prominent signs in the stores as a warning if their 
products have become Chodosh.



It is important to emphasize that this potential worm problem was only 
found in a few of batches of flour produced by one company. There is no 
evidence that this is a problem with flour produced by other companies. 
Your local baker may be using this flour under a private label name. 
Therefore, local bakers should check with the flour distributor who sells 
them the flour to see if their flour came from these possibly contaminated 
batches. The distributors, in turn, are working with the flour mills to 
insure that in the future they can produce flour that is consistently free 
of such contamination problems.


******************************************************


OTHER ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS TO THE GUIDE



Update on soy and teriyaki sauces. Soy and teriyaki sauces often contain 
wheat flour which may be Chodosh. Such sauces are used widely in 
Chinese-style cooking. However they are also used often in all types of 
non-Chinese foods.

1.        The potential Chodosh problem is for the sauces that contain 
wheat flour. Not all soy and teriyaki sauces contain wheat flour. Check the 
ingredients.

2.        Even for these sauces that do contain wheat flour, those that are 
imported and are fermented are more than 6 months old. Therefore, they have 
no Chodosh problems.

3.        The following specific brands are aged and are Yoshon. For Soy 
sauce: Kikkoman, Yamas, Wan Ja Shan, Eden Soyu. For Teriyaki sauces the 
following are aged: Kikkoman, Eden organic (but Eden domestic sauce that is 
not organic is NOT aged.)



Em Zee Fruit Flicks contain wheat starch. They are made in China. According 
to the company, they do not know if this wheat starch is Yoshon or not.



Kemach Fruity Burst cereal contains wheat starch that is from winter wheat 
only.



Mezonos Mavin. According to the mashgiach, all items are Yoshon, even those 
that do not state Yoshonon the label.



The item on page 25 of the Guide that states that Landau whole wheat pasta 
is Chodosh after Nov. 1 is not correct. The entry on page 23 that this is 
Yoshon is current and correct.



General Mills cereals that contain oats, the Chodosh packing date has 
changed from Oct 20 to Nov 11. All of the codes mentioned in the Guide for 
General Mills cereals with oats should be adjusted accordingly. Namely, for 
248 days, the oats date is changed from Jun 24 04 to Jul 15 04. For 279 the 
Jul 25 04 date is changed to Aug 16 04. For 310 days, the Aug 25 04 date is 
changed to Sept 15 04. For 372 days, the Oct 26 04 date is changed to Nov 
16 04.



Gefen Barley is Yoshon and is expected to remain Yoshon until pesach.





******************************



HOW TO ORDER THE GUIDE TO CHODOSH TO BE SENT TO YOU BY E MAIL



You can order that the Guide be sent to you by E mail free of charge. There 
are two versions available, the PDF version and a plain text version. The 
PDF version is recommended for those who are able to read PDF files on 
their computers. The PDF version is an exact copy of the Guide, including 
the Hebrew letters used this year to sort all products and services into 
one of 5 categories and the page numbers used in the indexes. For those who 
can not read PDF files, the only option is the plain text version that 
loses much formatting and symbols.



To order the PDF version by E mail

DO NOT send any message to me at 
<mailto:yherman at earthlink.net>yherman at earthlink.net. Instead

DO send a plain blank message to: <mailto:maurice at moruda.com>chodosh at moruda.com

We have received several E mail messages from people who have tried to get 
the PDF version of the Guide (see below) by sending a message to 
<mailto:chodosh at moruda.com>chodosh at moruda.com and have not received any 
response. At least in some of those cases, it was due to the fact that the 
E mail service that they were using would block the return message which is 
supposed to contain an attachment that is larger than 500 Kbytes. If your 
mail service does not block large attachments and have trouble getting the 
PDF file, send me a message at 
<mailto:yherman at earthlink.net>yherman at earthlink.net. However, please try 
the automatic method first.





To receive the plain text version,

DO NOT send any message to me at 
<mailto:yherman at earthlink.net>yherman at earthlink.net. Instead

DO send an E mail message to: 
<mailto:Chodosh-request at jif.org.il>chodosh-request at jif.org.il

In the body of the message type:

Get Guide.txt

Make sure you capitalize as shown. You can also order text versions of the 
following:



get Guidelines.txt

This gets a long report on Guidelines to Mashgichim on Chodosh. This has 
not been updated in the  last few years, but is still substantially valid.



get News.txt

This gives the latest news bulletin, such as this note.



To send an E mail message to the Guide, please address it to: 
yherman at earthlink.net.



Before you discontinue using an E-mail service, please unsubscribe from 
this list by sending a message to:

chodosh-unsubscribe at jif.org.il.

Then if you wish to resume receiving these messages from your new service, 
send a message to:

chodosh-subscribe at jif.org.il.



__________________________________________

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.



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.capalon.com/pipermail/chodosh/attachments/20040310/af592e41/attachment.html>