What is the reason why someone would not keep Chalav Yisroel

amother

Sapphire

Tue, Aug 29 2023, 1:29 am

amother Poppy wrote:

DH has been a mashgiach for one of the major CY dairy farms.

He goes in before the shift begins, I.e. before the cows come in for milking. He inspects the equipment and the truck. He watches as the cows come in and are attached to the milking apparatus. He stays onsite and periodically (at least every 20 minutes) looks over the milking (which takes a good few hours) to make sure everything is as it should be. When the CY run is over he seals the truck.

The hashgacha has him sign in with a fingerprint periodically to make sure he is still there and on top of what's happening.

This farm used to have DA (the cows with that stomach surgery) and he'd look over the cows as they were coming in to make sure none of them were tagged as having it. Then the farm got rid of them so now there aren't really mixups with that though it's happened in the past. (Those entire runs with thousands of lb of milk were ruined.)

There are different mashgichim at the bottling plant that check the truck seal and supervise the pasteurizing and bottling.

If you have any questions about the process I can probably find out the answers for you!

Does your DH know why R Moshe Elefant and the Gdolim involved with OU, are ok with OU-D?

Does your DH think its Lchatchila or Bidieved acceptance? I cant believe that OU would allow a Bidieved situation.

Hashem_Yaazor

Tue, Aug 29 2023, 1:31 am

csstb wrote:

Truthfully, if we’re getting into the cow surgery discussion, may as well come full circle to R’ Herschel Schachter. He’s a YU rav who thinks all commercially produced milk in this country—including cholov yisroel milk—is treif because of the number of treifos in cows.

He was zocheh to a cup of milk just last week milked from a cow that had no chashash, not commercially produced 🙂
The problem is that in mass production, it's all mixed together...

amother

Poppy

Tue, Aug 29 2023, 1:39 am

Hashem_Yaazor wrote:

He was zocheh to a cup of milk just last week milked from a cow that had no chashash, not commercially produced 🙂
The problem is that in mass production, it's all mixed together...

That halachic approach doesn't make so much sense to me.

We say that an individual cow is assumed kosher unless known otherwise (the DA cows for example may be this issue). However, we know that among 100 cows, a majority will be treif.

If we count the milk of each cow individually, as each cow is hooked up to the milking machines, the milk that comes out is assumed kosher. It is then mixed with other milk that is assumed kosher, and therefore the entire batch is assumed kosher.

If we say that the milk is immediately mixed, we don't have that chazaka of the individual cows, and we go according to the majority, meaning that the milk is problematic.

(The DA cows are a bigger issue since "Ein Mevatlin Issur Lechatchila," we are not allowed to deliberately mix in a non-kosher substance with the intention of making it botul.)

To me it makes more sense to judge each cow individually, since each individual cow needs to be milked separately, and the milk flows through tubes into the truck or tank. It's not like juicing oranges which can all be squeezed at once. According to that, even though most cows nowadays are unhealthy and treif, it wouldn't affect the kashrus of the milk.

csstb

Tue, Aug 29 2023, 11:48 am

amother Poppy wrote:

No, we can only assume that each individual cow is kosher if most cows are. So if you assume the majority are treif, you cannot make a positive assumption about any single one.

Luckily, as far as I know, nobody is currently assuming that an actual majority is treif, just a significant percent less than half.

honey36

Tue, Aug 29 2023, 12:26 pm

amother Poppy wrote:

Wow! Thanks so much for your detailed response.

So basically your DH (or another mashgiach) are at the farm for every single milking? They don't rely on just checking up randomly? Also, just OOC, how long is his commute to the farm?

Does your DH every see government/FDA officials there checking as well to make sure there is only cows being milk? How does the government enforce that the milk is actually cows milk?

amother

Poppy

Tue, Aug 29 2023, 2:00 pm

honey36 wrote:

Yes. I don't know if every Cholov Yisroel hashgacha operates this way, but at least this one, a mashgiach must be physically on the farm for the entire run.

The hashgacha actually bought a house and pays a mashgiach's family to live right near the farm to make this easier. DH is just a substitute mashgiach. It's around a 40 minute drive for him, because we live in the boondocks already.

From what I understand the government regulations do not allow any other animals to be present on the farm. I'll have to ask him about how often they do inspections, I don't remember him mentioning it so it's not likely so often.

amother

Poppy

Tue, Aug 29 2023, 2:01 pm

csstb wrote:

Are you sure? I thought I heard Rabbi Shachter say that individual cows have a chezkas kashrus.

csstb

Tue, Aug 29 2023, 3:11 pm

amother Poppy wrote:

Are you sure? I thought I heard Rabbi Shachter say that individual cows have a chezkas kashrus.

They all definitely would if rov are kosher. I need to ask someone more familiar with his mehalech if he’s worried about the miut hamatzoi and that less than half are treifos, or it’s more serious than that, because now I’m actually seeing conflicting things.