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Butcher Is Accused of Passing Off Chicken as Kosher
The New York Times
Click Here for a newscast of this event (FOX5)
Kitchenware being cleansed at the Belzer Shul in
Ramapo, N.Y., in response to concerns that chicken
had illegitimately been sold as kosher.
Monsey, NY - Since sundown on Saturday, when the Jewish
Sabbath ended, men, women and children have been scrubbing
kitchen counters and stoves, and dipping pots and utensils
in scalding water.
“My husband and I had to leave everything we were doing,”
said Esther Herzl, 61, a Hasidic grandmother who lives here,
“and all we did was scrape and scrape and scrape — from the
cutlery to the glassware to the countertops, oven and stove.
I’m beat. We’re truly religious, so we don’t cheat in the
cleaning.”
The cleansing ritual, which is prescribed by Jewish law,
became necessary after a Hasidic butcher was accused of
stocking the shelves of a kosher grocery store here with
nonkosher chicken and selling it to thousands of Orthodox
Jewish families.
Now a group of rabbis is debating the fate of the butcher.
Last week, the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets
seized 15 cases of chicken from the store, Hatzlocha
Grocery, where the butcher sold chicken and other meats from
rented shelf space to test it for salt, a key ingredient in
kosher food.
The state agency and the rabbis, who represent several
Hasidic congregations in Monsey and elsewhere in Rockland
County, are trying to determine the origin of the chicken,
whose package carried the stickers of two area kosher meat
plants that had ceased supplying to the butcher after he
failed to pay them, according to a local rabbi and an
employee at the store.
“To sell nonkosher as kosher is one of the biggest acts of
betrayal that a Jewish person can do to another,” said Rabbi
Menachem Meir Weissmandel of Chemed Shul, a local synagogue.
“This is the darkest day in the history of our community
since we settled in this area many years ago.”
The butcher, Moshe Finkel, owns Shevach Meats, which buys
kosher chicken and other meats in bulk, and then slices,
packages and sells it at the grocery store and to wedding
halls, religious schools and Hasidic camps in the Catskill
Mountains.
Attempts to reach Mr. Finkel, who lives in Monsey, by
telephone were unsuccessful on Wednesday. Rabbi Weissmandel
said that Mr. Finkel was banned from Hatzlocha Grocery last
Wednesday, as soon as the store owners uncovered his alleged
transgression.
He said the store owners confronted Mr. Finkel after they
noticed the shelves lined with kosher meats, even though his
usual suppliers had not made a delivery. Almost immediately,
leaflets lined Hatzlocha’s windows, telling patrons in
Hebrew that Shevach Meats had been caught selling nonkosher
chicken. At synagogues and on the street, rabbis instructed
the faithful to throw out the meat and cleanse their
kitchens to make them kosher again.
The matter has been the talk of Jewish Web logs. One of
them, Vos Iz Neias, announced it under the banner headline
“Butcher Sells Treifa Chicken as Kosher.” (Nonkosher food,
or food that is not in accord with Jewish dietary laws, is
called treif, which derives from the Hebrew word teref, or
torn.) The posting generated 440 comments in two days.
Rabbinical panels often work in secret, so it is hard to
figure out when the rabbis here will reach a decision or
what it will be.
As for the state, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture
Department said investigators were trying to determine if
the chicken was ever certified as kosher and advertised as
such at the store. She said violators are subject to fines
of up to $1,000.
Posted By -
Techie on 09/08/06 at 09:12
Monsey
Meat Scandal - What went wrong
 As
a result of the recent unfortunate occurrence in Monsey, where
non-kosher meat was sold as kosher at an ostensibly reliable and
reputable butchery, a number of meetings were held by local and
national kashrus agencies throughout the area. A variety of
solutions were proposed to ensure that this type of incident
should never happen again.
In this article, we will try to analyze the situation and see
how effective these proposed solutions might be, as well as
presenting a realistic approach to avoid future problems.
Let’s begin by examining what actually occurred:
A kosher supermarket in Monsey, NY “sub-let” space to a kosher
butchery store. The butcher bought wholesale chicken and meat
from many different shechitas (kosher slaughterhouses), then
repackaged the chickens and meats with generic labels. The
labels would state which kosher slaughterhouse the meat came
from and would specify what kosher certification was therefore
attached to that meat.
In addition, this butchery, within the supermarket, had
additional kosher certification from a respected Rabbi.
As a result of a tip, the supermarket owner discovered two major
kosher chicken distributors had stopped supplying chicken to the
butchery months ago. When confronted, the butcher said he had
gotten chickens from other kosher sources. When checked, those
sources proved false. The local rabbinical leaders were
contacted, amongst them the Skver Dayan (a judge qualified in
Jewish law) who ruled that an immediate search of the butchers’
refrigerators needed to be done.
As soon as the Rabbi’s examined the cases of chickens in the
fridge, they discovered the chickens were not Kosher based on
the color of their skin, the lack of salt residue used in the
koshering process and the presence of their kidneys. Also, no
seal or signs were on the chickens or the boxes.
Non-kosher chickens had been substituted and sold as kosher
chickens. It is possible that this had been going on for as long
as eight years.
I spoke to someone who was involved in certifying the store, and
asked him if there was a mashgiach tmidi onsite. He replied,
“The owner was an orthodox observant Jew. How should I have
suspected he would do this?” It is natural for us to want to
trust a business owner when he seems to be a G-d fearing Jew.
But we must bear in mind that every business owner is a “nogeiah
bidovor” and has a vested interest in the success and profit of
his business. This interest could lead anyone, chas v’sholom, to
be tempted—especially when he faces other stresses in his life.
So it is imperative for the kashrus agency to monitor strictly,
even when the owner is a religious person.
Due to human limitations, unfortunately, mistakes can happen on
the part of kosher certifying agencies. Regrettably, most
agencies have encountered some type of problem over the years.
The genuine question is, how does the agency handle the problem,
and what steps are taken to rectify it? There are many
approaches to dealing with mistakes. You can blame someone else.
You can sweep it under the carpet. You can make a big chaotic
meeting after which barely any changes are made.
OK Kosher has had to deal with our share of past mistakes. When
they happen, our approach has always been one of introspection,
in order to determine where WE went wrong and what we can do to
improve OURSELVES and our kashrus system. Over the past twenty
years, this approach has led to some dramatic changes and
improvements in the way we operate. We have upgraded our systems
and mashgiach guidelines, as we learn from our own mistakes, and
those of others. Our goal is to ensure that mistakes do not
recur, and that the possibility of future mistakes is reduced as
much as humanly possible, b’ezras Hashem Yisborach.
A meeting of kosher certification representatives and Rabbi’s
was held, to discuss what happened in Monsey and to formulate
ideas to prevent a recurrence.
These are some of the proposed suggestions that were discussed
at the kashrus agency meetings:
1. Only traditional butcher shops should be patronized. Kosher
supermarkets should stop selling meat altogether.
2. Meat should be sold only in the original packaging put on by
the slaughterhouse.
3. If repackaging is done, then the name of the original
producer should not be used, only the name of the present
packer/seller should be used on the packages.
4. Use of holograms should be instituted. Holograms are seals
that are extremely difficult—some say impossible—to forge
5. Distributors should be forced to take certification. Not all
slaughterhouses have a competent distribution network, so
outside shippers transport sealed boxes of meat.
Now let’s examine each of these suggestions more closely, to see
whether they would have adequately addressed the weaknesses that
allowed the Monsey incident to happen.
1. Only traditional butcher shops should be patronized. Kosher
supermarkets should stop selling meat altogether.
The owner of the concession was a religious Jew, and was
considered to be trustworthy. He therefore was not closely
monitored, with disastrous consequences. If he had owned a
private butcher store, instead of a concession in a supermarket,
would he have been more reliable? What is the difference between
a butcher store in its own building and one located in a corner
of a kosher supermarket? The problem was not the location. It
was the lack of control by the certifying agency and the mistake
of relying on the owner.
2. Meat should be sold only in the original packaging put on by
the slaughterhouse.
Selling the meat only in its original packaging could be a
solution, but is impractical in the near term. The fact is that
butcher stores have always been a part of our lives and will
continue to be. Meat will continue to come into butcher stores
in bulk form, and then need to be repackaged in the store in
convenient sized packages.
3. If repackaging is done, then the name of the original
producer should not be used. Only the Packer/seller’s name
should be used on the packages.
We have been informed by Rabbi Luzer Weiss from the Division of
Kosher Law Enforcement at the New York State Department of
Agriculture, that the practice of repacking a product with a
generic label stating that it is certified by a specified agency
is actually illegal.
Nevertheless it is common practice. Let’s assume that the
practice of repackaging meats using the original producer’s
labels had never been instituted. Instead, re-packers would use
labels with their own store names and the names or symbols of
their certifying agencies. Would this have prevented the
storeowner in question from selling non-kosher meat? No! He
could still have done it, using his own labels to label any meat
he pleased—as long as those labels were in his possession and
NOT in the sole possession of the Mashgiach.
4. Use of holograms should be instituted. Holograms are seals
that are extremely difficult—some say impossible—to forge.
The same problem described above (in #3) regarding labels
applies to holograms when they are in the owner’s possession,
instead of in the sole possession of the Mashgiach. Just as the
storeowner in this case had possession and control of the kosher
labels, so he would have possession and control of holograms.
There have been instances at OK-certified meat establishments
where meat came in from the original slaughterhouse without
seals. Our Mashgiach rejected the meat and sent it back to the
truck. The (non-Jewish) driver had seals on the truck, and
proceeded to put them on the boxes of meat. Of course our
mashgiach, under the direction of his Rabbinic supervisor, still
rejected the meat. How would holograms help in such an instance
(other than to profit those selling holograms)?
5. Distributors should be forced to take certification. Not all
the slaughterhouses have a competent distribution network, so
outside shippers carry and sell sealed boxes of meat.
If we were to certify distributors under the same system that is
currently used in stores, what guarantee would we have that
distributors would not do the same thing that the owner of the
concession did? And what would cities distant from New York do?
They get their meat from various large cold distributors. Would
we hypothetically have to certify meat via FedEx to ensure it
gets to every Jewish community without interference?
None of the solutions above will guarantee that an incident like
this cannot recur. This is because the underlying problem is not
with the various stores, the labeling systems, or the
distribution system. Rather, the main and essential problem is
the total lack of control at kosher-certified meat
establishments.
Stories like this do happen and in fact can be expected to
happen with the current unsupervised meat establishments in
place. This is unfortunately not the first time such a story has
happened? Approximately a year ago, a very similar story
occurred in Flatbush, NY. A religious Jew with no mashgiach
tmidi on the premises was caught selling kosher meat as
“strictly Glatt kosher”.
Some people might say that the Flatbush situation was different,
because non-glatt meat was being sold as glatt, and the meat was
not treif. However, a quantity of plumbas (seals) from an
unreliable kosher meat company was found.
Even after this incident however, local certification agencies
did not recognize the need to require a mashgiach tmidi. No
changes were made to the supervision systems at kosher-certified
meat establishments. The owners and operators of kosher meat
establishments were able to carry on with free unsupervised
reign. So this unfortunate occurrence was just waiting to happen
again.
The OK has offered a different suggestion to rectify the
situation: The only way to prevent such incidents is to require
a mashgiach tmidi in every kosher-certified meat establishment.
The mashgiach would have full control of the keys and
refrigerators. This has been OK policy at meat establishments
for over 25 years. In a meat establishment where a reliable
mashgiach tmidi controls all the meat entering and leaving the
premises, and has sole possession of the keys to the store and
refrigerators, a shocking story like this could never have
occurred. And as a consumer, you of course have the power to
demand, check and actually verify the presence of the mashgiach
tmidi.
This is the foundation of giving reliable Kosher certification
to the establishment and not just to the owner, until now only
the owner was certified. With a mashgiach tmidi, the kosher
certifying agency can say that they are also certifying the
store, which is the most important goal.
As mentioned above, there is always room for improvement,
therefore another upgrade in kosher monitoring, built on the
foundation of a mashgiach tmidi, would be a system to track
kosher meat from the slaughterhouse to the store shelves.
Nowadays, when you order something online, you can track your
package’s exact location from the time it leaves the warehouse
until it arrives at your home. Millions of packages a day are
tracked in this way. A similar system can be instituted to track
meat. The technology for such a system certainly exists.
For example the scanning system at the cash register (already
used in the vast majority of stores today) records the exact
amount of meat and chicken sold. The mashgiach will have a
definite system from his kashrus agency for tracking all the
meat that enters and leaves the store, and he will be held
accountable for keeping an accurate record of this. The
mashgiach will be closely monitored by a Rabbi at the kashrus
agency to ensure that the meat is being properly tracked.
As a result of the incident in Monsey, I have personally visited
our butcher stores to begin the process of implementing such a
tracking system. It is doable, and would help to restore
consumer confidence in buying kosher meat. We commend Rabbis
Bik, Rabbi Weinberger, and Rabbi Eichenstein from the Hisachdus
Harabbonim for the Takonos that they issued to address this
issue.
If all reliable kashrus agencies would immediately require a
mashgiach tmidi with full control over the keys and
refrigerators, in every certified meat establishment, the public
could rest assured that a terrible scandal such as the one that
happened in Monsey will never be repeated. Additionally we
should collectively work toward implementation of a nationwide
tracking system.
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Onward Conquistadors
HA'ARETZ Magazine
September 25, 1998
[Material Deleted that
was not related to kosher slaughter]
It's 5 AM. on Monday,
August 24, 1998, in the Paso Carasco neighborhood of Montevideo Uruguay.
Yehuda Tsanani, 43, an Israeli from Rehasim, a religious village near Haifa
is crossing the still-dark street near the Carasco meat factory. Tsanani is
on his way back to the two-story building where the team of shohatim
(ritual slaughterers) resides. He has just finished a shift of few hours at
the plant, supervising the washing of meat that three days ago was on steers
sauntering in the meadow. Cut into sections, the meat will soon be packed in
cartons for shipment to lsrael.
The heavyset, bearded
Tsanani, ..., has been in the Uruguayan capital for three months now with a
team of slaughterers and inspectors....
Even at 5 A.M. Tsanani's
mind is racing.... Before entering his room - he shares the accommodations
with the meat crew, comprised of Israelis and Jews from neighboring
Argentina - he wakes up the others. Their workday will begin at 5:45A.M. The
head of the group, Rabbi Hanoch Hershkovitz from Bnei Brak, hustles the men;
one of them is his ... son Avraham, ....
At 5:30A.M. the team sets
out for the factory. The procession is led by Rabbi Hershkovitz and his son,
followed by slaughterers Yitzhak Mizrahi and Avraham Eisenberg, two more
inspectors and an internal examiner - all from Argentina. Trailing after
them are Elimelech Partik, from Bnei Brak, who is an external examiner - he
checks the lung after it has been removed from the animal -and Menachem
Tubol, ...from Even Yehuda, near Netanya, who until two years ago worked as
an inspector for the Chief Rabbinate on slaughter teams sent abroad by the
Rabbinate....
Tubol is here as the
agent of importer David Bordovich, who works in collaboration with the Hoger
Mazon food company. His role is to supervise the slaughter, ensure that the
meat is fat-free, and ascertain that the importer's labels are properly
attached to the finished product. At the entrance to the factory, which is
considered one of the largest and most technologically advanced
slaughterhouses in Uruguay, the group is joined by another shohet, Binyamin
Katashvili, an ... Orthodox Jew from the town of Kiryat Malachi, on the road
to Ashkelon. Katashvili is not staying with the others. He has arrived for
work from the center of Montevideo where he resides....
Kosher stamp
As the men enter the
factory, Carmen, who runs the store room, hands them a loos fitting white
uniform, a white plastic coat, a fiberglass helmet and boots. From inside
you can already hear the deep lowing of hundreds of steers that have been
transported here in trucks and herded into a large pen behind the
factory....
The three slaughterers -
Mizrahi, Eisenberg and Katashvili - station themselves in the slaughter cell
located on the ground floor. They are joined by Hershkovitz Jr. On the floor
above are the internal exaininer and the inspectors, their principal task
being to stamp the meat when the time comes. For this they use a long metal
rod on one end of which is embossed a large seal, which is dipped into
purple ink and then used to stamp the meat. Next to them, on an elevated
chair, sits Partik, the external examiner - the innards get to him hanging
from hooks via a conveyor belt.
The bulk of the physical
work is done by about 20 local workers. Outside, the steers are forced into
a long, narrow path between two steel fences, where they are lined up one
after the other. The two first bulls are shoved through a raised door into
separate large steel containers, each known as a "Box." Once the animal is
inside, the steel door descends, but not all the way to the floor: a narrow
slit is left at the bottom. Next, air pressure is released from below,
pushing up one side of the floor, tipping the steer onto his side, his feet
sticking out of the silt.
Stunned by this totally
unexpected development, he begins to bellow, his feet thrashing about,
desperately seeking a foothold. One of the local workers grabs a back leg of
the bull and lashes it to an iron chain. The door is raised again and the
bull is yanked violently upward by the chain attached to his back leg. The
animal is now dangling in the air its immense weight held by one foot, its
head down, A second worker locks the head into a crescent-shaped device that
has been grafted onto a long iron rod. The slaughters advance. Eisenberg and
Katashvili, holding well-honed, ... knives about half a meter long, each
approach a steer. The kill is dazzlingly swift, a second or two, one cut
forward and another backward across the bull's neck. It is done.
Immediately the two
animals, their bodies jerking convulsively, are lifted upward with the iron
chain, unleashing a torrent or blood. Wasting no time, the slaughterers and
the workers turn to the ... Box, where the next two steers are already
waiting. ... Their bellowing intensifies.
The slaughterers are back
in the slaughter cell, where hot water runs constantly from two pipes. They
wash the blood from the blades and run a well-manicured fingernail on their
right hand along the blade to make sure that it has not become flawed during
the act of slaughter. The halakha (Jewish religious law) stipulates that if
such a flaw is discovered, the steer is considered a nevela [carrion,
not-kosher]... and to eat it is a [forbidden] .... By the time Eisenberg and
Katashvili had finished examining their knives, the work of a few seconds,
Hershkovitz Jr. and Mizrahi had already slaughtered two more steers. The
first team steps up to dispatch steers number five and six, and the precess
continues.
In the meantime, the
slaughtered animals, by now dangling from large hooks, are pulled up to the
second floor, where workers attach them to a gigantic machine. A quick cut
loosens a flap of skin, which is inserted into the machine and pulled by two
rollers until the animal is completely skinless. The conveyor belt then
moves the steer along to the internal examiner. He sticks his hand into the
innards to examine physically if the lung is attached by "adhesions" to the
ribs. An animal in which no adhesions are found is called "smooth" and its
meat is considered kosher lemehadrim (strictly kosher).
If the adhesions contain
secretions that have hardened and become stuck to the extremities of the
steer's ribs, making them difficult to detach, the intenaal examiner so
informs the next stage of the team. He passes on the information by making a
large "X" over the representation of the lung on a drawing that has been
provided for the purpose. The external examiner, in this case Partik, will
thus know that the animal is trefa - found to be afflicted with a probably
fatal organic disease and hence foridden, for consumption by halakha.
If the adhesion is soft,
or if only, a few soft adhesions are found, the internal examiner conveys
this information by showing the place(s) of the adhesion(s) by means of one
or more small circles on the drawing. After the innards have been removed
from the steer's body, the drawing, together with the animal's actual lungs,
come to the external examiner. It is Partik's job to examine adhesions and
to decide whether they were caused as a result of a puncture in the lung (in
which case the meat is trefa), or whether they are only hardened secretions
that have emanated from one of the walls of the lung (in which case the meat
is kosher, but, lemehadrin).
Here is how the
examination is conducted: One of the workers fits the base of the lung onto
an air-hose. The pressure is turned on, filling the lung with air and
inflating it. The Jewish external examiner uses his hands to examine the
adhesion, or adhesions, after which the lung is thrown onto the tray of the
conveyor belt where the steer's innards have be placed. Situated next to the
external examiner is a bulletin board with the number of each steer that has
been slaughtered, with a small square next to the number; if the steer has
been declared trefa due to adhesion problems, this is duly marked with ink
in the square.
It is all done with
astonishing speed. Neither Partik nor Hershkovitz, the crew chief who took
over for Partik as external examiner has time to examine the folds and the
other parts of the lung before placing them on the conveyor belt. By this
method, more than 100 steers are slaughtered within an hour, 50 per Box, 27
seconds on average for each. ....
Has the slaughter been
performed according to the strict letter of halakha? For slaughter to be
considered kosher, both the windpipe and the gullet have to be [severed]...
No one in the crew checks to see that this has been done. ...In case a flaw
is discovered in the knife, an authorized honer of knives is supposed to be
present [at the instruction of the Chief Rabbinate], and only he is allowed
to correct the impediment. But in Hershkovitz/s crew there was neither an
examiner nor a honer of knives. Each slaughterer inspected his own knife and
if necessary he sharpened it on a grinding stone.
The halakha warns that
the person examining the knife must be calm and collected, and that his hand
must not be "heavy" so that he will be able to find any possible flaw in the
blade. The pace of the work in Uruguay left no time for a calm and collected
inspection: The crew had to keep up a steady rate of slaughter in order to
meet the importer's demands.
Because of the shortage
of working hands, a local inspector, a Chabad [shochet}...named Alberto, was
recruited to help out. He supervised the process of koshering the innards -
the heart, the brain, the tongue (the remaining sections were sent for
koshering to a meat plant in San Jose, about an hour and a half away). The
other inspectors were engaged in marking the meat. The ... locals ... pick
up the meat and they pour salt on the innards, after they have been washed
in water, in order to kosher them.
Raging Bull
Tubol, who is my guide in
the meat factory, assures me that "this is an advanced plant, compared with
others where kosher slaughter is done." Above us as we walk, blood drips
from the slaughtered steers, staining our plastic overcoats. The floor is
slippery with viscous fluids in various stages of clotting. As we returned
to the ground floor, one of the steers managed to slip out of the chain
around his leg as the door was raised, got to his feet and began to rampage
around the room. Everyone ran for his life; the slaughterers, horrified,
locked themselves in their cell. Only two brave workers tried to subdue the
raging animal. Fortunately for them, he slipped on the bloody floor and fell
to the ground. Immediately he was forced back into the Box and tied to the
chain again. "That happens a few times a day," said a nervous Tubol, who had
run with me to get safely behind the iron bars. Workers are often injured
when a steer breaks loose, he said.
At the end of three hours
of work the crew had slaughtered 300 head of cattle, of which 34 were
disqualified due to adhesions of the lung; ... A trefa rate of only 15
percent is very satisfactory for the importer, and Hershkovitz and his crew
claim that that is their average disqualification ratio.
At 8:45 A.M., as the
shift ends, the crewmen go back to their room, examine the knives once
again, and place them a long tube, which they close tightly. They then wash
the bloodstains from their hands and face, wash their upper bodies and get
ready for the shaharit (morning) prayer. ....
Three times the size of
Israel, Uruguay has half the population, about three million. ... Cattle
raising is a major export industry. About half a million head of cattle are
slaughtered every year in dozens of meat plants, nine of which also work for
Israeli importers. Most of them employ teams of the Chief Rabbinate, though
three have teams that are authorized to provide kosher meat for Haredi
groups: one for Rabbi Shach's Lithuanian community; a second for the "Eda
Haredit" (known as "Badatz" koshering); and the third, sent by "Atara-Beit
Yosef," the kashiut organization set up by the Shas (Sephardi Torah
Guardians) party five years ago and headed by Rabbi Avraham Yosef, the son
of Shas's spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
The Atara crew operates
in a meat processing factory located in Las Piedras, about an hour's drive
from Montevideo. There I met with Moshe Dahan, a Haredi from Ashdod, who was
the deputy chief. But things were more secretive here. Dahan refused to take
me inside without the say-so of the crew chief, Avraham Suderi, who was just
then supervising the slaughter process. Afterward Suderi told Dahan to get
that journalist off the premises immediately.
Until about eight years
ago, the Eda Haredit refused to recognize the meat that was brought from
abroad with only the kosher certificate of the Chief RAbbinate. The result
was that this ...Orthodox Jerusalem-based community was forced to buy fresh
meat slaughtered locally in Israel by Haredim .... To meet the demands of
Haredi consumers - and supply them with frozen meat at far lower prices -
the heads of the Haredi koshering group negotiated agreements with a number
of meat importers.
.... The Haredi public
consumes only meat that is defined as "smooth" (when the animals' lung has
no adhesions or secretions). Haredim are also more meticulous about exam the
slaughter-knife for possible flaws. A Haredi crew has between 12 and 14
members, as opposed to 10 or 11 on Chief Rabbinate crews.
Still, the personnel tend
to be a mixed bag: even the crews of the Haredi communities go abroad only
after getting the approval of the Chief Rabbinate, and 90 percent of their
members are registered with the Chief Rabbinate and have worked with that
institution at some point. "There is no difference between the slaughter
carried out by a Rabbinate crew and that of a Haredi crew," ....
What's more, Haredi
kashrut groups usually work simultaneously in the service of the Chief
Rabbinate. When they find a lung without adhesions, they label the meat
"smooth" and earmark it for Haredis. Animals having lungs with a few
adhesions, or with secretions but definitely without a puncture, are given a
Chief Rabbinate kosher label and also imported to Israel. The result is that
Haredi groups approve 30 to 35 percent of the animals they slaughter as
"Kosher for the Chief Rabbinate."
The crews of the Chief
Rabbinate find a similar ratio of "smooth" meat, but they are authorized to
grant only a regular kosher seal, not the mehadrin type, even though half a
year eariler, or a month down the line, these same people could be part of a
Haredi crew. ....
Israelis consume about
80,000 tons of meat a year, and 50,000 tons of it is imported from South
America, Europe, and China. Only about 10 percent of that quantity is
defined as "smooth" meat and labeled mehadrin. ....
It is commonly thought
that most of the kosher meat imported into Israel originates in Argentina,
but in fact the land of the pampas is only in fourth place. First is Uruguay
(with nine meat factories for kosher slaughter) followed by Ireland (six)
and Brazil (four). Other countries to which Israeli slaughter crews are sent
are Paraguay and China (two plants each), and Holland (one plant).
Meat is slaughtered and
koshered for Israel in two plants in Argentina. One of them operates all
year round in the service of the "Neve-Tzion" kosher label, given by Rabbi
Shlomo Mahfud, from Bnei Brak. Many Haredim, particularly those of Yemenite
extraction, consider meat with his label to be "ultra-medadrin." The
permanent crew chief is Avraham Anatbi, a resident of Argentina, whose
brother, Daniel Anatbi, the directory of the Rabbinate Department in the
Religious Affairs Ministry, was the bureau chief of Rabbit Ovadia Yosef when
he served as Sephardi chief rabbi. Most of the crew members are
Argentineans; there are only four Israelis, who reside in an apartment in
the Paso neighborhood of Buenos Aires. ....
Labels for more
A few weeks ago, Rabbi
Mahfud himself arrived in Argentina with two more slaughterers from Israel
in order to, as it were, beef up the crew and increase the rate of slaughter
from 400 to 600 head of cattle a day to meet the demand for the Jewish
holidays. ....
Meat with a Malifud
kosher label is much in demand....
The slaughter in the
meat-processing factory of Avraham Anatbi in Buenos Aires is done in
complete secrecy. When I asked to meet with Anatbi, I was told to wait
outside the factory. The crew members, whose workday began at 6 A.M.,
emerged at 10:15A.M., having slaughtered 400 head of cattle in four hours.
Anatbi was not among them. "Meat factories with Haredi kosher labels operate
like the Dimona reactor," I was told by a veteran slaughterer of the Chief
Rabbinate, who has also worked for Haredi crews. ....
For the past six months,
Rabbi Bakshi-Doron has been in charge of ritual slaughter and kashrut for
the Chief Rabbinate. In the five preceding years Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi
Yisrael Lau held the position, but half a year ago they rotated their
responsibilities (as they had agreed to do before being elected), with Lau
in charge of the Rabbinical High Court for the next five years. ....
.... The directives of
the Chief Rabbinate forbid the slaughter of more than 300 head of cattle in
a day if there are only three slaughterers, but the crew chief ignores this
and gives in to the pressure of the importer, who wants a higher output.
....
Kashrut problems also
crop up in Israeli ports of entry. The Customs Authority does not allow a
representative of the Rabbinate to be present when the meat is unloaded from
the ships. In some cases, problems are discovered only at the exit gate of
the port. Because of loading errors, cases have occurred in which cartons of
non-kosher meat, bound for other countries, arrived in Israel. The mistakes
were discovered only when the quantity of meat that arrived in the Israeli
port was matched against the stated quantity that was supposed to have been
shipped, and even then only when the story was leaked to the Chief
Rabbinate. In other instances, the Rabbinate confirms, non-kosher meat was
brought into Israel.
There are such cases. And
we discover it when the merchandise arrives at the meat-processing plant in
Israel," says director-general Shreiber. The problem perturbs Rabbi
Glucksherg: "I am afraid that we do not get hold of the cartons of trefa
meat that enter the country, and then the unclean meat gets to people who
eat only kosher meat."
A few months ago a
shipment of dozens of tons of meat from South America was discovered to be
ritually unclean, due to traces of abdominal fat (helev) and sinew
that were discovered in the animal's rear section. The entire shipment was
therefore sold to Arabs. "It happens sometimes," Rabbi Glucksberg concedes.
Koshering the rear part
of an animal requires the addition of a specialist to the crew. Many
importers prefer to save the time (the act of nikur, as it is called,
slows down the pace of kosher slaughter) and the expense involved. By
agreement with the meat-processing plants abroad, only the animals' forward
parts and innards are sent to Israel, with the plants left to market the
rear sections as they wish. Only if there is a demand for rear sections are
importers forced to send the specialist.
Another problem that
vexes the Rabbinate is how well the meat is frozen en route to Israel. Meat
that has not undergone the full koshering process before being shipped has
to be maintained at a temperature that does not rise above minus 16 degrees
Centigrade. The Rabbinate has no way to check the level of freezing during
the transport of the meat to the ship, while it is being loaded or in the
ocean crossing. "We have a problem," Rabbi Raful admits. "The level of
freezing is examined only in the plant and when the meat arrives in Israel.
What happened along the way is difficult for us to know."
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