STORY
BY CHERYL MILLER
CORRESPONDENT
PHOTOS BY PETER ACKERMAN
CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
The brisket you schlepped back from the butcher is browning nicely, and the tzimmes is just about done. You're pretending not to watch as your children drip honey on everything but the apples and challah it's intended for, and even the chopped liver dinner looks goods enough to eat — if you're a dog.
Tonight marks Rosh Hashanah, or the Jewish New Year, the beginning of a 10 day period when observers share food with family and cast their sins away, in preparation for Yom Kippur, a day of fasting, reflection and repentance. While adhering to kosher dietary laws on this holiday is a given for many Jews, there's a small group of observers who are concerned not only with what they put on their plates, but in their pets' bowls as well.
And we're not talking leftover brisket.
"It all started by accident," says Martine Lacombe, co-owner, with her husband, Marc, of the Florida-based Kosher Pets, which has been selling kosher pet food for the last five years. "Our Dalmatian suffered from bad rashes, so we started cooking for her what we were eating," which was a strictly kosher diet, she says. Shortly afterward, her dog's skin started changing for the better, and "people kept asking us, "What are you doing?' and we just said, "We're feeding her kosher like we eat.' "
Today the company produces a wide range of foods — from chicken chunk stew and lox and whitefish dinner for your finicky cats to beef brisket dinners for your pooches. Every item boasts all natural ingredients, and is grain and dairy free. And everything meets kosher law, says Lacombe.
Strict kosher adherence is twofold, says Rabbi David Booth of the Ocean Township-based Temple Beth Torah.
First, observers cannot mix meat and dairy, he says. Secondly, observers can only eat meat "that is permitted, and is slaughtered in a kosher fashion," he says. Permissible meat includes anything that has hooves and chews its cud, Booth says. Which means your cat won't be able to drink his milk right after eating his chopped liver dinner, and your dog will never know from a cheeseburger — or pork, for that matter.
But "kashrut," or kosher law, "only applies to people, not animals, says Rabbi Herbert M. Bialik, of Congregtion Agudath Achim, an Orthodox temple in Bradley Beach. In fact, "the Torah says that if an animal is rendered nonkosher," which could occur in any number of ways — illness, wounds, or any way that the animal's death did not meet the Kosher fashion of slaughter "you shall cast it to your dog," says Bialik.
The only complication might be around Passover, the eight-day holiday when observers must empty their houses of "chametz," or anything containing bread, that may be in our possession at this time, says Bialik.
A Jew cannot own any leavened products during this time, says Booth. And Lacombe says that business "is crazy" three weeks or so before Passover, "Many commercial (pet food) products are filled with wheat and grain, and ours aren't."
"We sell a lot of kosher products around the holiday," says Joann Parente, owner and manager of Dogs and Cats Rule in Pennington and Reigning Dogs and Cats in Newtown, Pa. They are particularly popular in the Newtown store, where there is a larger number of Jewish people, she says.
But in many of the food stores, there is virtually no demand for kosher pet food. "That's a new one on me," says Tom Diello, grocery manager at the Super Foodtown in Ocean Township. "I've never had a vendor approach me with it."
Throughout the rest of the year, Kosher Pets, a "niche" business, which is admittedly "unique," says Lacombe, sells to mostly religious people who want to keep kosher — or to pet owners looking for nutritionally sound foods for their four-legged "mensches."
"More and more people are concerned about the food they feed their animals," says Lacombe, "they want good quality — and kosher food is cleaner and healthier."
But some people are spending more money than they need to on kosher food, says Booth. Keeping kosher "should be as inexpensive as possible."
For more information, contact Kosher Pets Inc., 6278 N. Federal Highway, Suite 567, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33308. Phone (954) 938-6270.