Volume 215, Number 18 | Thursday, January 22, 2004
Home > News Up Front > Metro Back
Bison: The Other Red Meat
Metro
By : Faygie Levy Jewish Exponent Staff 1/22/2004
While the finding of an isolated case of mad cow disease in Washington state hasn’t done much to alter the eating habits of Americans, time has. In recent years — thanks in part to Bison is hot, thanks in part to its nutritional content. diet fads, which have many people eating more highprotein, low-carbohydrate foods — other types of meat have grown increasingly popular. One of them is bison. The market for this large animal commonly associated with the Western plains has “grown quite dramatically,” according to Dave Carter, executive director of the National Bison Association. He noted that in 2001, 19,000 animals were processed under federal inspections; that figure is expected to reach upward of 31,000 animals for 2003 after a final tally. He said that much of the animal’s appeal comes from its nutritional content. According to Carter, bison meat is high in protein and iron, yet low in fat and cholesterol.
The Jewish Exponent
While bison is part of the bovine family, and in theory could become infected with mad cow disease, the risks are lower, said Carter, because bison mainly eat grass and grain, not feed containing animal byproducts. Attractive and ‘ready-made’ When it comes to kosher meats, Carter said that bison is “readymade. It meets all the religious tenets as far as being kosher, and it’s an animal that has a lot of meat in the front quarters,” making it more attractive to kosher distributors. Rabbi Zvi Goldberg, kashrut administrator for the Baltimore-based Star-K Kosher Certification, explained that the hind quarters of animals are not eaten because they are harder to kosher, and are therefore sold as nonkosher meats. One of the few U.S. companies slaughtering kosher bison is Solomon’s Glatt Kosher out of Bridgewater, S.D., founded six years ago by Ilan Parente with “the thought that a leaner, healthier meat should be brought to the Jewish consumer.” Some 80 bison are slaughtered in accordance with Jewish law each week. (Any nonkosher meat is sold by another division of Parente’s company, called Bridgewater Quality Meats.) According to Parente, his company’s kosher bison sales have increased 35 percent annually for the last five years. According to Karen Meleta, a spokesperson for ShopRite in Northeast Philadelphia, bison, is “not a big seller.” The store makes “it available from time to time, but there’s not a great demand for it.” For some companies, however, bison is big. At Klapholz’s Kosher Delicatessen in Jenkintown, bison accounts for almost 50 percent of its sales, according to owner Jesse Klapholz. “I think people are still learning about it,” said Klapholz, who put bison on the menu when he opened his store last year, in part, because of its taste and high nutritional content. “It’s really an amazing total panacea.”
You may contact Faygie Levy via Email: flevy@jewishexponent.com