Troubles at meat plants prompt fears of kosher shortage

Finding kosher meat has recently become a more difficult venture in the Milwaukee area.

Local retail sellers of kosher meat reported late last week that they are experiencing varying degrees of kosher meat shortage — from no shortage to virtually no supply, depending on which suppliers and distributors they use.

Late Tuesday, Nov. 4, Agriprocessors Inc., the nation’s largest kosher meat producer, filed for bankruptcy, according to the Wednesday, Nov. 5 issue of The New York Times.

That situation combined with a fire-related shutdown at another major kosher producer, has caused industry insiders to say that significant supply disruptions are inevitable and kosher consumers should brace themselves for some rough times.

But Dovid Eisenbach, owner of Milwaukee’s Kosher Meat Klub at 47th St. and Burleigh has never bought from Agriprocessors and so he has not had any difficulty getting his normal supply, he told The Chronicle last week.

He buys from Alle Processing in Queens, N.Y., which is second only to Agriprocessors in size. Alle’s slaughterhouses are in Illinois, he said, and his meat is shipped to him directly from there.

Trader Joe’s, on Port Washington Road at Silver Spring Drive in Glendale, had a large supply of kosher poultry from Empire in the store on Friday last week.

Store manager Jose Mendiola told The Chronicle, in a telephone interview, that his store stopped doing business with Agriprocessors about a year ago “because we thought we got a better product from Empire.”

“There has been a lot of positive response to the fact that we have kosher chicken for a low price,” he said.

Pick ’n Save, located in the Glendale Market on Port Washington and Green Tree Roads, and Sendik’s in Mequon, are both suffering from kosher meat shortages as they have both been buying from Agriprocessors their meat department managers said in telephone interviews.

A stop at Pick ’n Save on Friday morning revealed no kosher meat for sale, except for hot dogs.

Meat manager Mark Bristow of the Milwaukee corporate headquarters of Roundy’s, Pick ’n Save’s parent company, said he has not been able to obtain meat from Agriprocessors for four to six weeks or more.

One of his two distributors, Twin Cities Poultry, has suggested another kosher meat supplier and Bristow is hoping to be able to get kosher meat from them soon —“ hopefully in less than a month.”

Jim Stein, meat manager at Sendiks in Mequon said that he too has been having trouble getting kosher meat from his supplier, Agriprocessors, since May, when the U.S. government’s Immigration and Naturalization Service raided the processing plant and arrested 389 allegedly illegal workers.

He said he decided he needed to find another supplier after his latest orders of 25 cases of meat resulted in only five or six cases delivered.

Rivkie Spalter of the Pelz Center for Jewish Living has been buying kosher meat from Agriprocessors and selling it to the Sendiks in Mequon. She said in a telephone interview on Friday that she is exploring new suppliers.

“We want to continue to maintain the highest level of fresh. quality kosher meat,” she said. And she is committed to making sure that Milwaukee has kosher meat readily available.

In the previous week or so Agriprocessors endured a cascade of awful news.

First, Iowa’s labor commissioner hit the company with nearly $10 million in fines for alleged wage violations. Then, the son of the company’s founder was arrested on charges that he helped purchase fake identification for the company’s illegal workers.

And on Oct. 31, news broke that a St. Louis bank had initiated foreclosure proceedings after Agriprocessors and its owners defaulted on a $35 million loan.

Kosher industry insiders are predicting that the company will not pull through. Company officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Meanwhile, production at the nation’s third-largest slaughterhouse, North Star Beef in Minnesota, has ground to a halt after a fire, the Forward reported Monday. Also according to the newspaper, a smaller Agriprocessors plant in Gordon, Neb., stopped operating in October.

Short-term disruptions in the supply of kosher meat, particularly kosher and glatt kosher beef, are now virtually guaranteed. Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of kosher supervision for the Orthodox Union, said he already has heard from communities that have no supply.

“There is going to be a sharp decline in availability immediately,” said Genack, adding that the company is trying to survive but that the situation is grim.

Agriprocessors representatives have had virtually nothing to say publicly over the past week as they faced a succession of ominous developments. But Bernard Feldman, the New York tax attorney hired in September as the company’s new chief executive officer, offered one stark prediction to the Des Moines Register.

“I don’t believe we’re going to have substantial production of any kind in the near future,” Feldman said in Monday’s edition.

Agriprocessors has been reeling since May 12, when federal authorities conducted what at the time was the largest immigration raid in U.S. history in Postville, arresting nearly half the company’s workforce.

The company’s troubles have only intensified in the last week and several industry observers said they believe the company cannot possibly recover.

In addition to the foreclosure by First Bank of St. Louis and the arrest of Sholom Rubashkin, the staffing company responsible for approximately half of the labor at the Postville plant suspended its contract.

Beef production has been shut down for several days. And reports out of Postville suggest that the company lacks the resources to slaughter and process the chickens in its possession, though some chicken slaughtering reportedly is taking place.

A federal judge placed the company in temporary receivership after First Bank filed a lawsuit alleging that Agriprocessors and its owners defaulted on a $35 million loan.

The lawsuit demands the return of the bank’s collateral — a category that includes “virtually all” of the owners’ personal property as well as the company’s accounts receivable, inventory and proceeds.

Agriprocessors also has received a power disconnect notice, the Des Moines Register reported. The company’s electric utility, Alliant Energy, reportedly is working with the company to work out a payment plan.

Meanwhile, a relative of the company’s owners has issued a call for the Jewish community to donate funds to help save the company.

Kosher industry insiders, including Agriprocessors’ competitors, uniformly believe that the company’s collapse would be a disaster for the country’s kosher meat supply.

Agriprocessors has been a pioneer in the industrial-scale production of kosher beef, and in many smaller Jewish communities its products are the only kosher ones available.

“For the kosher marketplace, there’s no question there’s going to be short-term shortages of kosher and glatt kosher meat and poultry,” said Elie Rosenfeld, a spokesman for Empire Kosher, a poultry producer.

“The industry overnight cannot pick up the decreased level of volume that Agriprocessors has been doing over the last couple of months.”

Rosenfeld said his client continues to see growing demand for its product, but he would not comment on reports that Empire has been exploring opportunities to begin producing kosher beef.