Holy Cow? or Holey Cow?

Is it possible that all milk isn't kosher? This week we revisit one of the most controversial questions of its time. Rabbi Yosef Landa - Rabbinic Coordinator at cRc Kosher walks us through all the details of this fascinating question.

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R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus, presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project and the CRC, the Chicago Rabbinical Council. Today I am honored to be joined by Rabbi Yosef Landa, Rabbinic Coordinator at the CRC. How are you Rabbi Landa?

R’ Yosef Landa: Okay, Baruch Hashem, how are you?

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Thank you for being here. You're a mashgiach with the CRC, the Chicago Rabbinical Council.

Correct? And one of your expertises is the area of dairy, correct? Correct. What does that generally involve before we get into our topic today?

R’ Yosef Landa: Well, dairy as you can imagine, it's milk, obviously, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, the main staple dairy products. And I do some other smattering of some other types of companies also, but mainly those type of products.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Now, I recall years ago, I don't know if this topic has arisen of late, but I remember years ago when there was a big tumult about the stomachs of cows, the abomasum, that they were either punctured, there were holes in the abomasum. For the lay person, give us a little overview about what the issue was then, how the issue was resolved if it was, and whether that's a concern still today.

R’ Yosef Landa: Right. Okay, yes. So about approximately 30 years ago, I forget exactly when as time goes on, it was discovered that it was not very common, but not rare, a condition that the cows developed, one of their stomachs became displaced from its normal place. It's usually associated with soon after a cow gives birth when it has a cavity, it has an extra space that wasn't there before, and the stomach falls out of place.

It can be on the left side or the right side. It was called LDA and RDA, left displaced abomasum and right displaced abomasum. One is more dangerous than the other, but it needs to be corrected. And it was discovered that the standard it seemed or at least one of the ways of correcting this was to puncture, puncture the abomasum, they call it a keiva, in the lashon of of Shulchan Aruch and the Gemara.

And which is a treifa, which is a treifa. If you puncture, you puncture this organ, it's a treifa. So this created a shaila for all the dairy products in the United States. I mean, because if certainly got cholov stam where there's no presence of the hashgacha on the farm, we don't know anything really what's going on over there.

We just take the milk as as being kosher inherently, based as a heter of cholov stam. But even with cholov Yisroel, when the when we have mashgiachs there on the farm, but same issue, same issue. You got they weren't looking or tracking and finding out which cows had this procedure and which didn't. And these cows gave milk into the general collection of milk that the farm produced.

And it was when they're making a cholov Yisroel product, you carefully isolate that milk and send it in a tanker to a different facility that actually makes the whatever dairy product, but you got the same problem. Got the same problem. So this problem came up approximately 30 years ago or so. So at the time, so cholov stam, I'm sorry, cholov Yisroel, any hashgacha on cholov Yisroel, what they moved to do is to isolate those cows. In other words, when the mashgiach were sent to a farm to do hashgacha on cholov Yisroel, they would segregate those cows.

They would segregate those cows out and they would not use they would not use the milk from those cows. I'm not sure how soon after the tumult arose, but pretty soon after that, that's what cholov Yisroel decided to do. And that's been implemented and it still continues to this day. It's been implemented.

Any cholov Yisroel hashgacha in the United States does not take milk from these cows. They they're segregated out. It's a standing system. When you go to any farm to when you want to set up cholov Yisroel, that's one of the things that you got to take care of.

You got to have a system of tracking and the mashgiach has to, usually there's a computer system of cows have tags in their ears. When any sophisticated farm, and most are today, there was a lot of consolidation of farms, smaller farms all had to consolidate. There was a lot of pressure in the dairy industry, not too many years ago. So they consolidated and most farms have this type of system where a cow when it gets up to be milked, they have the tag in the ear electronically read.

And they have a whole system of tracking the health of all the cows and they and they know which which cows have undergone which procedures and we have a system of of removing these cows. from from being used when when when we use chalav yisrael. So that that that that's what was done and that's that continues till this day. And that's a maalah.

That's a maalah that you avoid this entire shayla with chalav when you take chalav yisrael.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: And just to clarify, I know this is a very elementary thing what I'm going to say, but if someone out there watching this doesn't understand, the reason why milk or cheese that comes from such an animal is because once the animal is a treifa, so anything that comes from a treifa is considered treif as well. I know that's, you know,

R’ Yosef Landa: Correct. If the animal is treif then the milk is treif.

That's d'raisa m'd'Oraisa. The animal has a is a treif, this is a treif d'raisa. I mean, so the milk is is is assur b'achila m'd'Oraisa. Now, however, it's very important to note, the shayla however is only d'rabanan.

The shayla itself is not a d'oraisa shayla because of the rule that min b'mino batel b'rov. As we got treif milk is certainly not majority of the cows. No farm had a majority of the cows. The highest was, you know, at the time, you know, they were looking into it maybe 5% of the cows, tops.

Something like that. So it's not batel b'shishim, but m'd'raisa, bitul b'rov is enough min b'mino since you can't taste the difference between treif milk and not treif milk. So it's it's min b'mino batel b'rov, but m'd'rabanan it's not batel. D'rabanan is d'rabanan.

So so it was a shayla d'rabanan. So that's, you know, that's, you know, less of a less of a serious shayla, so maybe maybe there's room here and there to be meikel, but but but it was it was a problem.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Right, I also wanted to point out that for those who are makpid on chalav yisrael, besides for the chalav yisrael-chalav stam issue, this would be another reason, another benefit so to speak, of drinking chalav yisrael, that chalav yisrael obviates any concern of having these abomasum issues. Right.

R’ Yosef Landa: Right.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Any other thoughts on this particular topic?

R’ Yosef Landa: So, so yeah, so that's what chalav yisrael did. So but even CRC, most of our products that we certify, we have, you know, a little bit of chalav yisrael, most of the products we certify are chalav stam as well as the the major national hashgachas that are very familiar with. Most of them are are chalav stam.

So that did not take care of the issue of chalav stam. Now the truth is, for chalav yisrael it was worse. The shayla was worse. On chalav yisrael farms? Yes, yes.

The reason why the shayla was worse is because we know what's going on. There's a presence on the farm and we could learn, we could find out, the mashgiach could see, if he's if he's watching and looking at the cows, you can see if you're a cow that had a recent surgery, you can see an incision. You know, a healing incision on on on the side of the cow. So you can see it.

You could see it. If you're looking for it, you could see it. You know, you're not paying attention, you're not going to see it. That mean it heals kind of quick and you know, you're not going to after a while, you're not going to see it, but you could see it.

So you can know what's going on, or you could talk to the people, they have a computer system, they can find out. So in a way the shayla was worse. They really had to, you know, because they could be m'varer so to speak what which

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: On the non-chalav yisrael farms, they were not tracking which cows had undergone this procedure?

R’ Yosef Landa: No, the farm itself is tracking, but you the consumer and even us the hashgacha, we when it comes to non-chalav yisrael, we have no connection whatsoever to the to the to the farm at all. In other words, we certify a dairy processing facility that has pasteurizers and homogenizers and fillers and, you know, and packaging and everything.

That's where the hashgacha starts. We, you know, make sure that that everything is because it's it's heated equipment, you got to make sure that there's vitamins, whatever, you got, you know, the stuff to to make sure it's kosher when it comes to the dairy processing facility, but we didn't have any connection to the farm. We can have, you can have a a milk manufacturing facility that gets milk from 100 different farms. Okay, it's probably less now.

That was I remember asking someone once, someone's company, how many how many farms they get from? They said about 100 around the area over here. That was years ago. Now there was a consolidation, so so it's probably less than that now. But still, they get from quite a few farms and there is no presence of the hashgacha whatsoever on the farm.

So we don't know anything. We don't know anything. So over here it was good. We didn't know anything.

We didn't so we don't know, so you know, I'll explain in a minute, that's that was a maalah. But if you if you're present at the farm, it was worse. So so so so we made it better. It was worse, we made it better that we don't don't don't take any milk from these cows.

The question is, so what's what what was the heter? So so all the hashgachas all decided that we can they continue doing what they're doing. Right. You know, it was it was a dochek, you know, but but that's, you know, we wanted to have a good heter. We wanted to make a heter that makes sense.

So at that time, there were different, they looked into what exactly the procedure was. You know, without, you know, going into all the details, but so they they they thought they found they saw that it was done in a way that it was not treifa. The incision maybe, the the puncture maybe wasn't done straight through. There were other methods to to that they can accomplish the same thing and perhaps that, you know, it wasn't treif.

Also some wanted to say a chiddush that, you know, because we see that these cows don't don't die within 12 months. Right, right? That's what's supposed to happen to to a treif cow. So, you know, you could say a chiddush that that when it's done in this obviously when it's done in this setting, in this manner, it doesn't seem to be treif. But that's a but that's that's a chiddush.

That's a very big chiddush. reluctant to rely on that. So but initially it seemed that they they did rely on on on on on, you know, on the svara that it doesn't actually the way it's done doesn't actually make it treif. But then it was revisited a few years later because, you know, we saw that, you know, the reports coming that that that plenty of places it's done done in a way that's a classic treifa.

I mean, if you know, without any chiddushim, it's it's a treifa. So so, so it was revisited and and so there was there was a conference call and so Rabbi Yisroel Belsky zatzal at that time said, and this is a svara that that, you know, that was that was said originally, but that le'maiseh you have a rov. Le'maiseh in all in all in all cows, classically there's 10% treif, right? I mean we we find more today because we're machmir. But there are cows that are treif.

Right? The difference is we don't know, nobody knows. Since inside the lungs you can't, it's not checked, you don't know. So what what so why but somebody has a cow in his backyard, it's possible it's treif. He's allowed to he's allowed to drink their milk, right? Because you go basar rov.

The Torah says you're allowed to go you're allowed to go basar rov. So he said, this is the same thing over here. We we don't we don't know, we don't have a presence, we have no presence at the farms. We don't know, some there are methods that they do that that don't that don't make it treif.

So, it's the same rov. You got the you got the same rov. And and that's what you could be somech on. You know, the the the chisaron is that is there somebody that knows? There is, the farmers farmers do know.

But it's it's extreme it's to set this up and to make this change that if if they understand that they're not going to gain anything by this, they only have to lose, they're not going to give us this information. Why should they why in the world should they change their whole system and say, Rabbi, if we don't tell you anything, you you know, we're going to have to tell them the truth that it's accepted. So, so it's it's really not possible to find out. It's really not possible to find out.

The only way to do it was to to say, listen, okay, we're not going to give you a hechsher unless you do this. So for that, there is Cholov Yisroel. Right. So but al pi din, al pi din, we have the same rov that we don't know, and and any cow any cow out there could be treif, but the halacha is that it's you go basar rov and it's accepted.

And even though once you mix all the milk together, there's a high probability that there's going to be even even at the time, even at the time, there's you know, because I'm the situation the situation got better because the numbers improved. The numbers of the cows the surgeries

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: What different today than than from 30 years ago? What is different? What is different today than 30 years ago?

R’ Yosef Landa: Right. So it was what's different today is somebody who wrote a sefer, his name is R’ Manis Blumenrucht, his sefer is called Cholov Treifa. And he reanalyzed the whole thing.

He did a tremendous amount of polling to many different farms. And he found, and we've I found that in my experience as well, at the CRC, we've heard that the the numbers of the amount of treifas have gone down. Years ago, the first farm I I had to had to work with, you know, working for the CRC, the numbers was like 5%, approximately 5%. I've had experience with approximately, I'd say 20 farms maybe.

In the past 10 years, k'mat, they they don't have any. They don't have any. They have one, they have none. They they get rid of them.

I I they've and I've read some place that the veterinarians also say that they don't have they don't have as many. This used to get this used to be a more common procedure, less common procedure. I don't know the reasons. I don't I'm sure there are, you know, reasons for why, maybe they got they got better at controlling it.

In different parts of the country also originally there were different numbers. So, you know, possibly they they just got had better systems at of of maybe of the feed or of controlling this, and it's it's it's at the farms it seems it's it seems it seems to be a lot better. So, so then it's it's there's a chance now very, you know, very possible chance now that there's bittel or at least it's battel b'shishim or at least it's a safek. At least you're getting milk, it's a safek, you know, and it's a safek d'rabbanan.

Now, he wants to argue in the sefer after going through 18 chapters of why he really thinks it's treif, the procedure is treif, but and then he, you know, he talks about how the the polling that he did and the information that he found out, it seems to be that that that the situation is improved, the numbers are much better, and it's at least you can make a good argument that it's at least a safek and it's a safek d'rabbanan lekula.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Very interesting. Rabbi Landa, thank you.