Rabbinical-certified kosher donor milk is now an option for families with babies in the Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital, a member of the Westchester Medical Center Health Network (WMCHealth) located in Valhalla, New York. The kosher milk bank expands on the hospital’s already successful Liquid Gold Preemie Donor Milk Bank, which was established in 2019 and has provided nearly 1,200 extremely premature babies with safe donated breast milk. The milk is donated by carefully screened and medically cleared mothers of babies in the hospital’s Regional Neonatal ICU whose milk production exceeds the needs of their own premature infants.
Because donor breast milk needs to be certified as kosher before it can be used by observant families, there were no formal options locally for kosher donor milk until now. Thanks to a recently completed agreement, the milk is certified kosher under the New Square Rabbinical Kashrus Council.
Rockland County, which is served by the hospital, has the largest Jewish population percentage of any U.S. county, at 31.4%, or 90,000 residents. Westchester is home to 89,000 Jewish adults and 16,000 Jewish children in 56,000 households, according to the UJA Federation.
