Ahhh the life of a moo-juice lover in a modern western country: milk shakes in a carton, fancy cheese counters from centre ice to the goal line, and what seems like a gazillion flavours of yogurts and puddings. Israel is a paradise for milk products.
And whom do we blame for the success of the Israeli dairy industry? Blame Canada, of course!
There are lots of dairy cattle in Israel, almost all of them the well known black and white Holstein breed. And where did they come from? Canada, of course! Well, there were a bunch from the States too, but when I talked with local cow guru Ralph Ginzberg, he said nobody quite remembers exactly how many from which country, but definitely a significant number, about 2000 hefers he recalls, emigrated from Canada back in the 1950s.
The women were preceded in 1946 by 11 sisters and a dozen studly Holstein bulls, who were put to work doing their thing to help the land flow with milk. (Hmmm, I guess I owe you a future blog on honey in Israel with that reference.)
The immigrant Canucks were then cross bred with the local Baladi Damascus strain of cow, which had been mooing and chewing their collective cuds – and giving milk – in the Holy Land for centuries. The resulting decendents of the cross breeding look like the same Holsteins, but generations later they are now their own breed: the Israeli Holstein.
[Just how many dairy cows are there? Well, the Israel Dairy Association says 110,000, but the Israel Cattle Breeders Association told me about 80,000. Either way, it's a lot less than the almost 1 million dairy cows in Canada. ]
And the Israeli cows are not just impressive, they’re great! World champs at producing milk. A champion Israeli cow can produce up to 18,000 liters of milk – that’s 18 tons of production from one cow – in one year! Some academic at at the University of Oklahoma even wrote a paper on them.
The stats are indeed impressive. In 2006 the Canadian Holstein produced an average of 9,677 liters of milk, while her Israeli cousin outclassed her with an average of 11,506 liters of milk - almost 2 tons more!
About 2/3 of dairy farming in Israel takes place on a kibbutz. I take my kids a couple of time a year to some of the closest kibbutzim (Hebrew lesson for today: one kibbutz, many kibbutzim – pronounced kee-BOOTS-eem) where they can get a within-reach and very smelly look at where their milk comes from.
A close friend of mine from Toronto who has a degree in computer science moved to a kibbutz years ago and married a girl from a neighbouring kibbutz. When he moved to his wife’s kibbutz the locals were thrilled to get him and put him to work right away in the dairy barn. Why? Because the entire system was computerized and they needed a computer guru to help run the dairy operation.
Israeli farmers and engineers helped pioneer some of the modern methods of dairy farming. Each cow is tagged with a small radio transponder. Each time she’s milked, fed, takes sick or is bred, it goes into a database. The result is that Israeli dairy farmers for many years have had a closely monitored production system that has led to Holy Land cows being the most efficient milk producers.
Israelis are also great consumers of milk and milk products. And for those who are lactose intolerant there’s lots of soy milk to be had too.
Milk rules. From zero percent yogurts and cheeses to blood thickening local parmesans, consumers here have a huge choice. And not just cow milk, as there is a large goat milk product industry here too.
Every year dairy product sales soar around the Shavuot (Feast of Weeks) holiday. Israel’s last year spent about $12 million extra on dairy products for the holiday. It’s a traditional thing to eat dairy products on that holiday, and helps celebrate Israeli cows and their Canadian heritage.
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