Meatpacker gets back to work
By TONY LEYS • tleys@dmreg.com • June 14, 2008


The Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville has made big strides in restarting production after last month's immigration raid, a consultant said.

"They're increasing productivity every day," said the consultant, Menachem Lubinsky.

Lubinsky, a New York kosher-food marketing expert, said managers of the Postville plant told him they have brought in many new workers. They are trying to replace the nearly 400 who were arrested by immigration agents and many others who fled after the May 12 raid.

Lubinsky, whose clients include Agriprocessors, said managers told him the plant is producing nearly 70 percent as many chicken and turkey products as before the raid. They are having a harder time restoring production of beef products, he said, apparently because butchering beef requires higher-skilled workers.

Agriprocessors was by far the largest American supplier of kosher meat. Lubinsky said it accounted for up to 60 percent of beef products and up to 50 percent of poultry products. No other company comes close to its capacity, he said, so no one could step in and make up for the drop in meat supply after the raid.

At first, he said, many kosher markets around the country had problems obtaining meat.

"What's happening now - it seems there is no rhyme or reason," he said. "There are just spot shortages here and there."

Prices in some areas have jumped about 20 percent because of the shortages, he said, but other areas have seen only the general inflation affecting all food prices.

Even before the raid, the owners of the Postville plant were the targets of controversy. Critics have accused them for years of exploiting immigrant workers and being inhumane to livestock. Some Jewish critics have urged people to avoid buying the company's products.

Members of the Rubashkin family, who own the plant, have denied wrongdoing.
The debate is being felt at Des Moines' only kosher restaurant, Maccabee's Deli.

Rabbi Yossi Jacobson, who runs the deli, has long relied on Agriprocessors for all of his meat. He has heard from a few customers expressing discomfort about buying the company's products.

"There are those who want to lynch them, to hang them out to dry," he said. "I tell people, sometimes you've got to rely on God to do the judging."

Jacobson is a leader in the Lubavitch wing of Orthodox Judaism. The group also includes the Rubashkins, and he knows them personally. He said he has been urging customers to think of the hundreds of families who rely on the plant for their living.

Jacobson's deli still has about a month's worth of beef in the freezer, but Jacobson had to turn to a competing supplier for chicken. He has had to raise his prices from $2.39 to $3.99 per pound for cut-up chicken, and he worries that he wouldn't be able to get relatively small shipments of beef from Agriprocessors' East Coast competitors.

Others are less patient than Jacobson. Some national Jewish groups have urged members to consider avoiding purchases of Agriprocessors' products, although no major group has called for an organized boycott.

Yehuda Shain, a rabbi who runs the group Kosher Consumers Union, said he already avoided the company's meat before the raid, mainly because of concerns about its kosher certification.

Shain said Agriprocessors has undercut its competitors' prices, mainly by paying low wages to its workers. The company's market dominance has grown for years, despite serious questions about its practices, he said. "Price is price," he said.

But the pattern could change, Shain said. "Now that their costs are going to go up considerably, they're no longer going to be able to play that game." He said Agriprocessors probably will be forced to pay higher wages and more closely follow government and kosher-agency regulations.

Shain said the company also might try to rely more heavily on a packing plant it owns in the South American country of Uruguay.

He said he doubts any other kosher-meat producer would be interested in buying the Agriprocessors plant if the Rubashkins have trouble staying in business. Shain said the plant supplies both kosher and nonkosher meat, and it would be hard to run it as a kosher-only operation. No other kosher-meat supplier owns a joint plant, he said, and he doubts any others would want to.







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