Glatt kosher meat supply dwindling

Local stores starting to feel the pinch

By Yaffi Spodek

Issue of Nov. 14, 2008 / 17 Cheshvan 5769

Reported shortages of glatt kosher meat and concern about extreme price hikes have followed the Nov. 4 bankruptcy filing by Agriprocessors, owned by the Rubashkin family. The company has suspended operations at its Postville, Iowa meatpacking plant, and at a smaller plant in Nebraska. A third major U.S. slaughterhouse, leased by Alle, also known as Meal Mart, for glatt meat production, is also reportedly not in operation at this time, further squeezing the supply.

Though not unexpected – months of financial troubles followed a May 12 immigration raid in Postville during which 389 workers were arrested – the Agriprocessors shutdowns are likely to have a significant impact on the kosher meat industry. Local suppliers, such as Brach’s and Gourmet Glatt, are starting to feel the effects.

Yanky Brach, the owner of Brach’s supermarket in Lawrence, says that his store has not bought Rubashkin meat in years, and “very occasionally” uses their poultry. Though meat supply at his own store likely won’t be affected, he said he has received “desperate” phone calls from other local businesses.

“We haven’t felt the pinch at all, but we have seen it a lot here,” Brach told The Jewish Star Tuesday. “Half a dozen restaurants have called me in the last week alone asking if I can supply them with meat.”

Brach said while he would accommodate such requests as best as possible, his own customers come first.

“A couple of them I can manage, to the degree I know I can increase my supply,” he said, “but we’re set up to fulfill our customers’ needs, and I can’t commit until I know where I’m getting more meat from.”

Though the meat supply is adequate now – and Brach reports that his business even experienced a large increase during the yom tov season – a shortage is likely in the coming weeks, on both a local and national level.

“Unless the Rubashkins can get something together – and I certainly hope they can because they performed a good service – the meat supply will have to be increased somewhere,” Brach asserted. “Without Rubashkin, there just won’t be enough meat to go around. An influx of customers, the people who used Rubashkin’s, need to get their meat from somewhere. The phone calls I’m getting and the spike in my customer base obviously shows that there are a lot of people not getting what they need.”

Brach’s primarily gets meat from Alle, which employs shochtim and mashgichim who slaughter beef at different slaughterhouses throughout the country.

“They have always managed to get their meat from sources where the meat was top quality...and they’re scandal-free,” said Brach, calling the company “always reliable and stable.”

“We never got a single ounce of meat cut from our order,” he added, even during the holiday season when many stores were struggling to meet consumer demand. “Since our suppliers and the systems we set up have been doing well, we really haven’t been experiencing any shortages...The worst we’ve had was a slight delay during the yom tov period.”

“Agri was definitely a huge part of the business,” said Aron Hirtz, manager of Gourmet Glatt on Spruce Street in Cedarhurst, though he pointed out that Rubashkin supplied boxed beef only to his store, as opposed to “hanging” beef, which Gourmet Glatt processes in its own meat department and obtained from other sources.

“Because we have our own in-house menaker, we are able to do our own nikur [the de-veining which is part of the koshering process], so we don’t really buy so much boxed beef, as opposed to other stores who don’t have that luxury,” Hirtz explained.

However, during the yom tov period, when consumers buy larger quantities, “you cannot physically provide all the meat from hanging beef,” Hirtz said. “There’s only so much in each animal...You must buy boxed beef.”

The timing of the bankruptcy filing, post yom tov, and not at a time when demand was greater, lessened the blow somewhat.

“It’s after yom tov, so it’s not such a disaster,” Hirtz commented. But he added that for certain foods, such as poultry and turkey, suppliers “are going to have to scramble.”

Hirtz also observed that while the price for cattle is getting lower, kosher prices are increasing and stores have to call up suppliers to beg for products. In better times, stores were “chased” by salesmen who offered competitive prices.

“There’s no more calling up and saying ‘I’ll get you a better price,’” Hirtz said. “A year ago, I was having a field day calling around [to get the best prices]...That’s all in the garbage.”

Brach cautioned that people used to getting Rubashkin meat “will pay more... The Rubashkin family worked very hard to create an unsustainably low price point.”

He noted that the company could afford to sell their kosher meat for lower prices because they also made a profit on the non-kosher half of the business, which kept prices down. Typically, only about half of an animal is sold as kosher. Also, since Rubashkin’s meat was vacuum packed, without ice, its lower shipping weight resulted in lower prices.

“You can’t compare the meat of an Alle frank with a Rubashkin frank, but the Rubashkin frank was always cheaper,” Brach noted. “I choose to pay a slightly higher price to Alle for what I consider a vastly superior product.”

Alle currently is not accepting any new customers, Brach said, which he found out after referring a local restaurant owner.

“That really prompted me to realize how bad it is for people who relied on other sources,” Brach observed.

He also praised Alle for “not raising their prices as much as they could have,” to reflect the added expenses incurred during the holiday season that only allowed for one or at most two days of slaughter per week, instead of the usual four.

He said he has been told the company is scouring the U.S. looking for ways to increase supply. “The meat’s going to have to come from somewhere and I don’t see where that’s coming from now. We’ve had adequate supply, but if demand increases by 40 percent, unless I can get 40 percent more in my supply, somebody will be disappointed.”

Concerning poultry, Elie Rosenfeld, a spokesman for Empire Kosher Poultry, said that the company is constantly analyzing the demands of the market.

“Empire is evaluating almost hour by hour, at least day by day, the needs of their customers in the consumer market, in adjustment to the reality of our business,” he said.

Though he acknowledges that there is currently a shortage of kosher beef and there will definitely be less available in the coming months, he believes that poultry supply will not be affected in the long term.

“In terms of poultry, it will become less of a problem as time goes on as different suppliers increase their production, based on each different company’s size,” he observed.