Mission:
The Cornell Kosher Food Initiative Statement
The Cornell Kosher Food Initiative (CKFI) is a special program within the Department of Food Science that provides research, teaching, and extension programming in the area of religious foods, particularly - kosher and halal. The program also covers ethnic foods. The stakeholders include consumers who follow these rules or choose to purchase products under religious supervision, the food industry that prepares such products for all consumers, the secular regulatory authorities that need to integrate these two religious systems into the secular food system, and finally the religious supervision authorities who need to better understand food science. The CKFI provides written material (including an extensive web based article at www.ift.org, go to on-line publications, go to Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, vol. 2, issue 3), specialized talks, and email responses to many questions from all these groups along with journalists. Some of the program's major accomplishments in recent years have included a humane (halal) slaughter poster for on farm and small locker plants that has been translated into Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Spanish. Design of a special pen for small animal (sheep, goat, calf) religious slaughter that has successfully been built and beta-tested. The CKFI has and is participating in animal welfare initiatives of the Food Marketing Institute and the National Council of Chain Restaurants; the Humane Farm Animal Care program; and a review of the OIE (the UN's World Animal Health Organization)a international animal welfare standards. The recent undercover video taken by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) at the largest glatt kosher slaughterhouse in the US has required intensive efforts by the program to help move forward to a hopefully much improved religious slaughter situation that fully meets the needs of the various religious groups while meeting modern animal welfare requirements.
The Cornell Kosher Food Initiative Statement
The Cornell Kosher Food Initiative (CKFI) is a special program within the Department of Food Science that provides research, teaching, and extension programming in the area of religious foods, particularly - kosher and halal. The program also covers ethnic foods. The stakeholders include consumers who follow these rules or choose to purchase products under religious supervision, the food industry that prepares such products for all consumers, the secular regulatory authorities that need to integrate these two religious systems into the secular food system, and finally the religious supervision authorities who need to better understand food science. The CKFI provides written material (including an extensive web based article at www.ift.org, go to on-line publications, go to Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, vol. 2, issue 3), specialized talks, and email responses to many questions from all these groups along with journalists. Some of the program's major accomplishments in recent years have included a humane (halal) slaughter poster for on farm and small locker plants that has been translated into Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Spanish. Design of a special pen for small animal (sheep, goat, calf) religious slaughter that has successfully been built and beta-tested. The CKFI has and is participating in animal welfare initiatives of the Food Marketing Institute and the National Council of Chain Restaurants; the Humane Farm Animal Care program; and a review of the OIE (the UN's World Animal Health Organization)a international animal welfare standards. The recent undercover video taken by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) at the largest glatt kosher slaughterhouse in the US has required intensive efforts by the program to help move forward to a hopefully much improved religious slaughter situation that fully meets the needs of the various religious groups while meeting modern animal welfare requirements.