A shortage of special kosher-for-Passover margarine is causing dismay in Jewish households across the nation as family cooks discover they can't make many of their traditional Passover meals without it.
Particularly irksome is the absence of kosher-for-Passover stick margarine, an essential ingredient in baking for the weeklong holiday starting at sundown today.
"Margarine-gate, that's what we're calling it," says Rabbi Moshe Elefant, chief operating officer of the kosher division of the Orthodox Union, the leading kosher certification agency.
Some stores in the New York area have been rationing kosher-for-Passover margarine, letting customers buy only a single package. Others are using it as a marketing tool, selling only to those who agree to buy a certain quantity of other items too.
In Dallas, Mona Allen, a mother of four boys, is still desperately looking for enough margarine for the cookie and cake recipes she has perfected for years.
"I bake a lot, because I want to sweeten the holiday that my kids complain about," says Allen. "No matter how many new things I try at meals, they say, `Yuck, Passover food.'"
Margarine is crucial to kosher cooking because the dietary rules don't allow mixing meat and milk products, such as butter, at a meal. Margarine, made of vegetable oil, can be eaten with meat or milk, and it can be kosher if rabbis oversee production to be sure no dairy products touch the machinery.
That's not good enough for Passover, though. Stricter kosher rules for the holiday forbid corn and legumes such as soy. So Passover margarine is made only from cottonseed oil or palm oil.
But it's a once-a-year product, and a hassle to make. Machinery needs to be broken down and cleaned before the margarine is made to prevent contamination with nonkosher food.
Further discouraging production is a shortage of cottonseed oil that has driven its price way up. Some U.S. farmers deserted cotton to plant corn last year when ethanol production sent corn's price higher, industry officials say.
RAB Holdings Inc., which sells the Manischewitz line of kosher foods, learned in December that Ventura Foods LLC, which makes its best-selling Mother's brand, had gotten out of the Passover-margarine business. Ventura Foods bowed out because the plant was consolidated with others, and "the expense to become kosher certified wasn't perceived to be worth it," says John Kidde, an official there.
