Kosher-meat shortage from plant's shuttering

It was a tough Thanksgiving for Jacob Levy at Cherry Hill Kosher Mart.

His supplier of kosher turkeys raised the price about 20 percent, but Levy said he couldn't pass that kind of increase on to his customers.

"Thanksgiving was very hard to me," Levy said.

"There's a shortage of meat," he said. "When there's a shortage, the price goes up, and the margin goes down. I had to suffer myself."

And Levy wasn't the only one suffering. Donald O'Brien, the category manager for ethnic foods at Acme Markets Inc., was scrambling to find enough kosher meat products to stock three key stores in kosher areas, although he did manage to scrounge up enough turkeys.

"It's been a challenge," O'Brien said, in classic corporate understatement.

The shortage locally and nationally is the result of the collapse of Agriprocessors Inc., formerly the largest kosher meatpacking company in the country. In May, nearly 400 workers were arrested in an immigration raid at the company's Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse.

Since then, the company has struggled, and the plant has closed, leaving a hole in the $12.5-billion-a-year U.S. kosher-food market.

Agriprocessors stopped shipping beef about three weeks ago and chicken in the last week, customers said.

Since there are only a handful of processors nationwide who slaughter animals according to Jewish law and under the supervision of rabbis, the shutdown has cut the supply of kosher meat to the bone.

Particularly hard hit were the supermarkets. "They supplied 300 to 400 supermarkets with the meat," said Menachem Lubinsky, editor of KosherToday.com, a newsletter.

Lubinsky, a former spokesman for Agriprocessors, said the company had supplied 60 percent of the kosher beef and 40 percent of the kosher poultry sold in the United States.

Agriprocessors specialized in delivering meat precut, prepackaged and ready to sell.

Now, Agriprocessors' customers are turning to other suppliers, including Empire Kosher Poultry Inc., in Pennsylvania's Juniata County, the nation's largest producer of kosher poultry.

Supplies are scattered - maybe a London broil is in short supply today, and tomorrow briskets cannot be found, Lubinsky said.

"What is clear is that [Agriprocessors'] competition can't keep up with the demand," he said.

Even if suppliers try to stay loyal to their steady customers, Lubinsky said, they may insist, in this tough period, on cash on delivery.

"Credit is tougher to come by," he said. "It puts a strain on the smaller businesses."

Ira Fischer is a partner in Brooklyn Kosher Meat L.L.C., a New York company that receives meat from kosher-processing plants and then cuts it into smaller pieces for delivery to food wholesalers. They, in turn, sell to local kosher butchers such as Glendale Kosher Meats & Poultry Market Inc. and Simon's Kosher Meat Products, both in Northeast Philadelphia.

"Our allegience," he said, "is with our customers who have been with us for a long time." Brooklyn, Fischer said, is trying to avoid raising prices.

In Narberth, Itay Lipinsky, who helps run Main Line Kosher Meats Inc., said his family's business, which did not get its meat from Agriprocessors, was benefiting from the company's collapse.

That's because, he said, customers did not want to buy Agriprocessors' products for ethical reasons. "It's like people not buying diamonds from South Africa," he said, recalling the apartheid-era boycotts.

Nearby, the Acme supermarket in Narberth is one of three Acme stores with a strong kosher business. In those three stores, Acme maintains a separate kosher-meat-handling room in accordance with Jewish law.

The stores also stock a full array of kosher products and include kosher fish and bakery departments.

"Our goal, really, is to have a one-stop-shopping opportunity for all our customers' needs," he said. "When they come to us, they can do it all in one stop."

O'Brien said that Acme has been able to get enough kosher meat and poultry to supply those stores. What is missing, he said, is the prepackaged kosher products from Agriprocessors that Acme offered in some other stores. There is no alternate source, at the moment, for those products, O'Brien said.

Until supermarkets like Acme or the ShopRite in Cherry Hill moved aggressively into the kosher-meat business, most consumers bought from small butcher stores such as Levy's in Cherry Hill, or Glendale's and Simon's, located less than 10 blocks from each other on Bustleton Avenue.

The owner of Glendale's said that supermarkets, which can charge less, and the decline in the number of people keeping kosher have combined to knock out many businesses similar to his.

"Our generation, in their 40s and 50s, aren't like the old

bubbes.

They don't know how to make the stuff," he said. "If one-eighth of our congregation kept kosher, I would have to hire two more butchers.

"Everyone comes around the holidays and expects us to stay in business. You can't just live on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover," Glendale's owner said, declining to be named.

The irony is that the current upheaval in the kosher-meat supply chain is bringing him some new customers - customers who now cannot find what they need at the local supermarket.

"I get some strange faces coming in," he said, "but I don't know if they are going to be steady or if they are going to be wanderers."