Jun 4, 2013
Rav Verner lowers status of slaughtered chickens from mehadrin to regular kosher
The following 5 pages is a letter written by Rav Dovid Yechiel Verner, the rav of Hadera. This letter was distributed by the Rabbanut via its mailing list. The contents of the letter are both interesting and important, so I have decided to share it with you here.
Rav Verner has given his hechsher to a brand of chickens called Hod Chefer. The hechsher he gave to this companies chickens was a mehadrin hechsher. In this letter, Rav Verner announces his decision to remove the mehadrin status of the hechsher, and the demotion to a regular kosher hechsher instead. The first two pages of the letter are the announcement of the decision, and the approval of the new status. The next pages are a letter to the shochtim and supervisors explaining his decision (I will only translate the last pages - the letter explaining his decision).
By the way, the change is effective immediately. Rav Verner says that the company is changing the packaging to remove the word mehadrin from the label, but if you should come across such chickens that still say mehadrin, they should be treated as regular kosher and not mehadrin. People who eat this brand of chicken and want the mehadrin level should be aware that Rav Verner says these chickens are no longer mehadrin.
Rav Verner writes to the shochtim explaining:
I feel obligated to explain to you why i decided to lower the level of the hechsher of the Hod Chefer slaughterhouse from mehadrin kosher to regular kosher - not mehadrin, so that nobody should imagine that there has been a weakness in your holy work.
I testify about you that your quality of work has not changed n the slightest recently. Just the opposite, you have been more careful and more diligent in your holy work and you stand on the guard of kashrus with strength and wisdom, with fear of God and great expertise. Everybody knows that your work is a prime example of mehadrin kashrus.
The reason for the lowering of the level of kashrus is due to recently a number of very important Badatzes have come to our place and are slaughtering many chickens in a special unit nearby us. The mehadrin chickens they package into special packages with the hechsher of those Badatzes using their own name. The chickens that they reject from being mehadrin they are passing to us for us to kasher along with the chickens that we shechted here. The administrators of the factory have asked me that these chickens should be sold with the produce of Hod Chefer under my name and with my hechsher as mehadrin.
And I ask, how is it possible to ask me to do such a thing? All the shochtim and bodkim of those Badatzes have not been appointed by me, they are not working under my authority, but under the authority of those Badatzes - and those Badatzes do not allow their name to display on this produce under any level of kashrus, yet from me they want me to approve it as mehadrin, while the Badatzes wont even give it a regular kosher status....
About 20% to 30% of the chickens shechted by those Badatzes are rejected daily by the and want to salt those chickens separately, and then I would be able to continue giving the mehadrin hechsher to the chickens shechted by us at Hod Chefer and I would give those rejected chickens the kashrus of regular kosher.
But, the administration of the factory has decided to transfer to us all those chickens slaughtered by the other Badatzes, and that we should kasher them together with our chickens - yet we know salting is like boiling - and a high percentage of our chickens are mixed up with the chickens being brought from there, and how can they demand of me to certify those as mehadrin!
This is the reason that I am forced, with great pain and distress, to lower the level of kashrus of Hod Chefer to regular kosher - not mehadrin. There are other reasons as well, but out of the ways of peace I will not state them.
The factory administration has promised to me a number of times that they would fix the situation, that the other chickens will be kashered separately, but have reneged on those promises. So, I cannot give the mehadrin hechsher to this mixed up produce when a large percentage is really not mehadrin.
I pray together with you that the factory administration will find a way to separate our produce from their produce so that we will be able to upgrade the level of our kashrus certification on our chickens back to mehadrin.
thoughts:
I imagine Rav verner must know the reason those chickens were rejected and is not suspicious of them actually being not kosher rather than just not mehadrin. He does not say what was wrong with them and why those Badatzes rejected them, but even as regular kosher he could not accept them unless he knew they were really so.
20-30% sounds like an extremely high percentage of rejects, specifically for chickens. I am very curious what they are being rejected for.
I am surprised the administration is willing to give up the mehadrin status for this and is not quick to create a method to keep the batches of chickens separate. The mehadrin chickens are sold at a higher price than regular kosher chickens, and they have sold them so for a long time until now. Suddenly dropping the price is going to be a big hit. The increased volume must be humongous to make up for it.
I commend Rav Verner for sticking to his guns despite the heavy pressure he must have been under...
Rav Verner has given his hechsher to a brand of chickens called Hod Chefer. The hechsher he gave to this companies chickens was a mehadrin hechsher. In this letter, Rav Verner announces his decision to remove the mehadrin status of the hechsher, and the demotion to a regular kosher hechsher instead. The first two pages of the letter are the announcement of the decision, and the approval of the new status. The next pages are a letter to the shochtim and supervisors explaining his decision (I will only translate the last pages - the letter explaining his decision).
By the way, the change is effective immediately. Rav Verner says that the company is changing the packaging to remove the word mehadrin from the label, but if you should come across such chickens that still say mehadrin, they should be treated as regular kosher and not mehadrin. People who eat this brand of chicken and want the mehadrin level should be aware that Rav Verner says these chickens are no longer mehadrin.
Rav Verner writes to the shochtim explaining:
I feel obligated to explain to you why i decided to lower the level of the hechsher of the Hod Chefer slaughterhouse from mehadrin kosher to regular kosher - not mehadrin, so that nobody should imagine that there has been a weakness in your holy work.
I testify about you that your quality of work has not changed n the slightest recently. Just the opposite, you have been more careful and more diligent in your holy work and you stand on the guard of kashrus with strength and wisdom, with fear of God and great expertise. Everybody knows that your work is a prime example of mehadrin kashrus.
The reason for the lowering of the level of kashrus is due to recently a number of very important Badatzes have come to our place and are slaughtering many chickens in a special unit nearby us. The mehadrin chickens they package into special packages with the hechsher of those Badatzes using their own name. The chickens that they reject from being mehadrin they are passing to us for us to kasher along with the chickens that we shechted here. The administrators of the factory have asked me that these chickens should be sold with the produce of Hod Chefer under my name and with my hechsher as mehadrin.
And I ask, how is it possible to ask me to do such a thing? All the shochtim and bodkim of those Badatzes have not been appointed by me, they are not working under my authority, but under the authority of those Badatzes - and those Badatzes do not allow their name to display on this produce under any level of kashrus, yet from me they want me to approve it as mehadrin, while the Badatzes wont even give it a regular kosher status....
About 20% to 30% of the chickens shechted by those Badatzes are rejected daily by the and want to salt those chickens separately, and then I would be able to continue giving the mehadrin hechsher to the chickens shechted by us at Hod Chefer and I would give those rejected chickens the kashrus of regular kosher.
But, the administration of the factory has decided to transfer to us all those chickens slaughtered by the other Badatzes, and that we should kasher them together with our chickens - yet we know salting is like boiling - and a high percentage of our chickens are mixed up with the chickens being brought from there, and how can they demand of me to certify those as mehadrin!
This is the reason that I am forced, with great pain and distress, to lower the level of kashrus of Hod Chefer to regular kosher - not mehadrin. There are other reasons as well, but out of the ways of peace I will not state them.
The factory administration has promised to me a number of times that they would fix the situation, that the other chickens will be kashered separately, but have reneged on those promises. So, I cannot give the mehadrin hechsher to this mixed up produce when a large percentage is really not mehadrin.
I pray together with you that the factory administration will find a way to separate our produce from their produce so that we will be able to upgrade the level of our kashrus certification on our chickens back to mehadrin.
thoughts:
I imagine Rav verner must know the reason those chickens were rejected and is not suspicious of them actually being not kosher rather than just not mehadrin. He does not say what was wrong with them and why those Badatzes rejected them, but even as regular kosher he could not accept them unless he knew they were really so.
20-30% sounds like an extremely high percentage of rejects, specifically for chickens. I am very curious what they are being rejected for.
I am surprised the administration is willing to give up the mehadrin status for this and is not quick to create a method to keep the batches of chickens separate. The mehadrin chickens are sold at a higher price than regular kosher chickens, and they have sold them so for a long time until now. Suddenly dropping the price is going to be a big hit. The increased volume must be humongous to make up for it.
I commend Rav Verner for sticking to his guns despite the heavy pressure he must have been under...
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Maybe the readers can help me clarify a few things?
ReplyDelete1. Is he saying that this is the fault of the badatzim. Certainly they can't force anybody to but the chickens they say aren't mehadrin? But it sounds like he is blaming them.
2. In one place he says, very rightfully so, that how can he say the chickens are mehadrin when the shochtim don't work for him. But in the end he is putting his name on them that the are "regular" kosher. How can he do that if they are working for him?
1. to me it sounds like he is blaming the owners/administrators, not the badatzes. they didnt really do anything wrong.
ReplyDelete2. that is why I wrote that he must have known what the problem with them was to cause them to be rejected in the first place. otherwise he couldnt call them kosher at all. he is clearly trusting the mashgichim of those badatzes to at least say it is kosher.
the various badatzes (we dont know which specifically is involved here, though I heard a name but have not confirmed it) do not have separate lines of mehadrin and non-mehadrin. the badatzes only produce mehadrin chickens. that is why they have to pass off any non-mehadrin chickens to other hechshers that are willing to produce two separate labels of chicken.
Let's clear something up here - there are three levels of poultry kashrut:
ReplyDelete- regular rabanut - kosher and 'fine' for non-religious, and many national religious as well, probably fine for be used in processed food like regular rabanut hot dogs, shnitzel, etc...
- mehadrin rabanut - most chickens in Israel have this status.
- rabanut chalak - only some rabanuts have their own mini-badatzes
- badatz 'glatt/chalak' - (even though we know there is no halak status on poultry.
This is only an issue for frum people and the torani national religious people who keep for mehadrin chicken as fine, the vast majority of Israelis do not, and do not notice if they are buying rabanut or not. At my company, I normally pester the mashgiach who confirms that the vast majority of chicken is rabanut mehadrin, but the caterer is under no obligation to order that or regular.
to josh,
ReplyDeletei don't really understand your 3/4 levels of kashrut? (mehadrin rabanut and rabanut chalak seem to be the same )
i understand that there are 2 basic levels (and please correct me if i'm wrong):
1. rabanut regular - for anyone who wants to rely on the basic (bedieved/no chumrot/not trying to cover all shitot/relying on "rov") shulchan aruch. (does "non-religious" mean that you don't keep kosher? and what does "national religious", i.e. believing that the return of the exiles to eretz yisrael in our days is the hand of G-d, have to do with the level of kosher?)
2. mehadrin - whether rabanut or any one of the various badatz organizations (correct that chalak/glat is not technically applicable to poultry) which try to cover all (most) shitot/lechatchilah and include various chumrot (where each organization/rabanut/badatz decides which chumrot/level it tries to adhere to, including the speed of the assembly line, the level of supervision (how many mashgichim/how often) etc. and there are of course organizations that are more stringent/better supervised/more honest/(better PR) than others.
Every person has to decide for himself what he relies on (and in the real world it may depend on many factors - like if you are buying for your house, if you are eating out at a restaurant on vacation, if you are invited to a wedding or to your neighbor's for a meal or if you work in a yeshiva in RBS or in a hi-tech office in tel aviv - which have different lunch options.
(and i'm not sure what you mean by "frum people" who keep mehadrin..
I think there are 3, but the 3 are difficult to define. though I will not define who eats what, as sometimes I am surprised what people are or are not makpid on.
ReplyDeletethere is:
1. rabbanut, not mehadrin, not glatt, just plain rabbanut
2. mehadrin. from what I understand and have heard in shiurim by kashrut experts, there is no law defining what qualifies for the label mehadrin. anybody can label their chicken mehadrin and sell it as such.
3. mehadrin+ (badatzim).
numbers 2 and 3 are really difficult to define, because there are no standards in place, and besides for the rabbanut there is absolutely no transparency. you can say the eida, rubin, landau, machpud and beit yosef are all mehadrin+, but can any of you actually define what the standards they each use are? what are the differences between them?
fleish and auerbach probably fall into #2, mehadrin, simply because they do not split open the chicken. but then again, there is not a single opinion in shulchan aruch that suggests you must. so, when the others do, are they really being more machmir or more mehadrin?
It would appear to me based on what I have heard from Rabbonim that
ReplyDelete1. Non mehadrin chickens are deemed Kosher if there is any mainstream opinion that permits it. The standards for who shechts, checks, cleans, the chickens, speed of shchitah, labeling, shipping, factory conditions, layout, general workers (use of non Jews)... are less rigid than better mehadrin. The goal is cheap and
2. Mehadrin- There are no rigid definitions of what constitutes mehadrin anything. Assuming that the rabanut and other hashgachot are honest in their labeling of mehadrin items, then mehadrin hashgachot will choose there standards of who shechts, checks, cleans, the chickens, speed of shchitah, labeling, shipping, factory conditions, layout, general workers (use of non Jews) with more care. They should have some defined parameters based on a posek that delineates the standard. It may be marginally or very significantly better than regular shchitah.
3. Bedatzim- A more rigid set of standards which is hopefully does not accept questionable chickens to be sold under their label. To recupe any losses from questionable or not quality chickens with reason to be permited to non mehadrin lines.
I heard that Eidah chareidis does not pass on chickens to nonmehadrin lines. So they try to find stronger ground to permit anything sold under their hashgacha.
The exact psakim they follow is ellusive and requires a lot of shimush and interogation, investigation to know.
According to the shulchan aruch,a chicken is either kosher or traif.There is no inyan as with beef of kosher & Chalak.Therefore it is up to the consumer as in all situations to decide which hashgacha he trusts.As someone whos has worked in the kashrut field with the rabbanut & various badatzim Chicken is Kosher.If you want to take chumrot upon yourself KOL HAKAVOD but don't try to pass it on to the Tzibbur.
ReplyDelete