By COLlive reporter
Meat is in the middle.
The CHK kosher division of the Crown Heights Beis Din has been working overtime to avoid a meat and poultry shortage for those relying on their certified products.
They have asked David Elliot Poultry Farm based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to up their production. This past Sunday, CHK had 2 Lubavitch shochtim slaughter meat at Solomon’s Meat plant in Nebraska.
“I don’t foresee a huge shortage,” CHK Kashrus Director Rabbi Yosef Kirszenberg told COLlive.com this week. “Everyone is doing their best to make it available. There may be a few days gap in the supply of chicken.”
The race against time was triggered by CHK’s sudden notice on March 7, 2024, that they are terminating their certification of Agri Star Meat and Poultry in Postville, Iowa, the largest kosher meat plant in North America.
Rabbi Avrohom Osdoba and Rabbi Yosef Braun, who oversee CHK, cited a “strained relationship and inconsistent adherence to proper procedures (that) have created an environment detrimental to our kashrus supervision” at Agri Star.
Agri Star and its supervising kashrus authority Rabbi Menachem Meir Weissmandl deny these claims. They said it may be related to Agri Star working with a new Lubavitch kashrus agency headed by Rabbi Shlomo Segal, formerly of CHK.
The Lamed-K certification which to be a national Chabad organization has since certified the Lubavitch shechita production of the Shor Habor label at Agri Star.
Owners of restaurants and grocery stores and caterers in Crown Heights received the news in shock. “Agri is the best meat out there,” one of them told COLlive.com on condition of anonymity. “Everything was going fairly smoothly. This is such a pity.”
The person said that food establishments certified by the CHK aren’t allowed to use non-CHK meat. On the other hand, there are products and cold-cuts that no other company produces on a grand scale, like Agri Star.
Rabbi Kirszenberg states that all Agri products that bear a CHK symbol are permissible to eat.
(Update to article) He added that the cold cuts such as salami, turkey, corned beef, and pastrami are Kosher L’Pesach if they are marked KFP.
Agri Star stated: “The deli must bear a KFP label; otherwise, it’s not kosher for Passover.”
Other alternative meat and poultry sources, in addition to Solomon’s and David Elliot, are Uruguayan meat by Yossi Rubashkin’s Stonehill Group and Generation 7 Springfield Distributors.
But COLlive has learned that the door wasn’t fully shut on CHK and Agri Star. At least 3 separate sources confirmed that there have been ongoing talks between CHK Rabbis and executives of Agri Star, with the help of intermediaries.
“The CHK had a long-standing working relationship with Agri and the community of Postville, so we’re trying to figure out and see if it can work,” one source said.
A source at Agri Star has said they have been planning for a while to move the Shor Habor label to a national Chabad supervision while creating a new and smaller label for the CHK products. It remains to be seen if the offer still stands.
Sources at Agri Star and CHK refused to elaborate on the topic or comment on the discussions and their progress.
Solomon’s is great quality meat, so excited to try it now under the CHK label!
I heard the same from some of my poilisher relatives, they also claim it to be from the healthiest brands out there
how is the lamed kay hechsher a national supervision?