Kosher Meat Suppliers Served With Federal Subpoenas

The world’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and several other major kosher meat suppliers have been served with federal subpoenas in connection with a criminal antitrust investigation

AgriProcessors of Postville, Iowa, received its subpoena for documents and not for testimony, from a federal grand jury and at least two other kosher meat suppliers have also received subpoenas in connection with the probe, according to Washington, D.C., attorney Nathan Lewin, who represents the Iowa slaughterhouse. “AgriProcessors is in the process of cooperating with the investigation,” said Lewin in a written statement. “It has been told that neither the corporation nor any corporate officer or employee is presently a target of the investigation.”

One industry insider, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, said the unique certification process involved in producing kosher meats made the industry particularly vulnerable to potentially illegal market allocation. “There is an unwritten agreement not to traipse on each other’s hechsher's,” he explained, referring to the rabbinic kosher certifiers who give their stamp of approval to the ritual processes by which meat must be slaughtered under religious law.

The power of custom and sectarian loyalty to particular kosher certifiers among various Jewish religious groups means “if you have a certain hechsher, you have a lock on a certain part of the market geographically and religiously,” this insider said. Lubavitch and Satmar chasidim, for example, have separate certifiers to which they are each exclusively loyal. The meat companies, understanding this, effectively divide up the market by agreeing not to use each other’s certifiers, the source explained.

Multiple sources within the industry said that the Justice Department’s probe appeared to begin seven to nine months ago, when several companies were contacted and questioned on a non-subpoena basis. “They wanted to know about communications we might have had with other companies,” said an official from one of the firms contacted. “Who we talked to and what we talked about.” AgriProcessors, Alle, Globex and Empire Poultry are among the firms said to have been contacted then.

Conservative and Orthodox rabbinic organizations are currently examining the allegations.