As always, couple items to note ….

• The Uri L’tzedek boycott of Agriprocessors has gone into effect. The self-described Orthodox social justice group (which doesn’t like the word boycott) said it would refrain from purchasing Agriprocessors’ products on June 15 if the company didn’t agree to establish a transparent mechanism to ensure compliance with Jewish and U.S. labor law. A meeting took place last week, but the group is still waiting for assurances that the company has turned a corner. There’s more on this here.
• Meanwhile, another Jewish group is jumping into the fray. In keeping with its historic roots, Ameinu, the American wing of the World Labor Zionist movement, has issued a statement urging Jewish groups not to patronize Agri. We’ve also heard that another summer camp, the Conservative Ramah Darom in Georgia, turned away a shipment from Agri. Our gut here is that this is likely to further convince the company’s defenders that Jewish outrage over this issue is simply an opportunistic pile-on for liberal groups.
• Meanwhile, some of the most damning evidence of an impending shortage emerged last week when we discovered that FreshDirect, the popular Internet retailer that gets all its kosher meat from Agri, has some 40 kosher meat products listed as currently unavailable. No worries if you’re planning to serve glatt kosher beef neck bones this Shabbos, the supply of which seems to be holding. (NOTE: If you follow that link, you need to type in a NYC zip code to see the page. If you’re outside the city, use mine: 11215). However, there does seem to be enough meat for the company to have donated 1,000 pounds to flood relief in Iowa, a Chabad website reported.
• Finally, an email was circulated this week by a Lubavitch rabbi in Connecticut describing a recent meeting local rabbis had with Rabbi Seth Mandel, the OU’s head of meat supervision. More on that, after the jump.

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Rabbi Shlomo Levin, spiritual leader of Milwaukee’s Modern Orthodox Lake Park Synagogue, has an opinion piece in J the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle. calling on the Orthodox establishment to start certifying the working conditions at kosher meat companies:

The Orthodox Union states clearly that its supervision relates only to whether food is permitted to be eaten. It does not consider labor issues, animal cruelty, environmental impact or anything else of this nature and has no plans to start doing so. Why not? For many reasons.

The list of potential issues to include in expanded supervision is nearly endless. The government already regulates some of these matters; the O.U. lacks the required resources and expertise.

And many of these concerns are not uniquely Jewish, while the O.U.’s purpose is to serve the special needs of the Jewish community.

There is nothing wrong with the O.U. conducting itself in this manner, as long as we understand what the O.U. symbol means. A product is kosher to eat, but whether the company manufacturing that product is kosher to do business with is unknown.

What we need is not a replacement for the current kosher supervision system, but an addition to it.

Since how a business treats its workers, the environment and its animals is important, we need another mechanism by which consumers can receive that information.

The Conservative movement has taken some steps to form a “hechsher tzedek” kosher certification focused on the above issues. Some other small, independent groups have done the same.

The Orthodox kashrut establishment, however, due to its large existing infrastructure of supervisors, would be able to produce a new certification with the greatest ease, efficiency and speed.

As kosher consumers, let’s make clear that we want them to do so. Only if we as consumers make known that we will base our purchasing decisions on the presence or absence of such a new symbol is it likely that substantial action will be taken.

We’re a little overdue for an Agriprocessors update, and as always, there’s some choice nuggets to report.

• Bruce Braley, the Iowa Democrat whose district includes part of Postville, made a pointed statement on the Agriprocessors situation, saying the company shouldn’t get any more second chances. Braley was responding to an inquiry concerning Iowa’s decision to reduce by three-fourths the $182,000 fine levied against the company for safety violations. The Iowa Workforce Development’s labor division said leniency was warranted because the company plans to improve. “You have to keep pressuring [Agriprocessors] to engage in the right behavior,” Braley said.
• Folks in Postville have told me that more subpoenas have been issued at the Agriprocessors plant, though details are sketchy about who is being summoned. This news follows a report late last month that a close associate of the Rubashkins had been summoned to appear before a grand jury. All this is sure to fuel even more speculation that the government is planning to bring company officials (or former officials, as the case may be) up on criminal charges. The U.S. Attorney’s Office refused to comment.
• The Associated Press ran a story this week on continuing fears of price hikes for kosher meat. I’m proud to say we were ahead on this, but the AP did add an interesting wrinkle: Even if Agri can get itself back up to speed, it will almost certainly have to pay documented workers more than the undocumented, or falsely documented, ones it had previously employed, which would likely undermine the company’s major competitive advantage: cost.
• Eight kosher summer camps in the midwest have found a non-Agri supplier of kosher meat after the company filled an order for meat with a shipment that was two years past its date.
• Leah Koenig has an interesting interview with a former Agri kosher supervisor on her food blog, The Jew & the Carrot. His take: “It seems very typical considering that the way they managed the company is kind of unprofessional …I don’t think [the Rubashkins are] monsters or deliberately trying to hurt anyone. It’s their lack of professionalism.”
• In a sign of how hopelessly far apart the ultra-Orthodox are from the rest of the Jewish community on this, a religious blog published this frontal assault on Conservative and Reform Jews, accusing their leaders of cynically exploiting the Agri situation under the guise of genuinely caring about kashrut.
• And finally, the folks who claim responsibility for getting the Agri ball rolling sent us this heartwarming story this week: A PETA investigator sent thousands of dollars worth of vegetarian food to the Postville church that has been helping families affected by the raid. PETA, by the way, might not have a taste for meat, but they certainly do for irony.

Rabbi Morris Allen, project director of the Conservative movement’s hekhsher tzedek initiative, made a quiet visit to Postville two weeks ago to talk to some of the workers he’d met on his previous visits in 2007 and ’06.

He went with his 19-year-old daughter, not as a representative of his movement, but just to show those arrested in the May 12 immigration raid that a rabbi cares about them.

So far, 300 workers have been convicted, he says. Some are wearing electronic ankle bracelets, to make sure they don’t report to work or flee. Allen visited one woman who said she couldn’t pay her $750 June 1 rent because she was now out of work. As she was talking, Allen saw her ankle bracelet plugged into the wall for recharging. “How much more indignity can be imposed on these people?” he asks.

Allen spoke to a 16-year-old boy from Guatemala who has been working at the plant for a year. The boy doesn’t go to school. “The sad thing is, if he’s deported, he will probably have reached the highest salary level he’ll ever have in his lifetime,” Allen says.

A local church, St. Bridget’s, is trying to help out by distributing money and food to those most severely affected. “Sister Mary is running as much of a social service agency as possible, taking care of several hundred people,” he reports. “It’s unbelievable to see these people walking around with GPS monitors on their legs.”

Allen’s synagogue, Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, MN, is collecting money to send to the church, to help relief efforts.

But there are two sides to every issue, he adds. Downtown there’s a new community center that the Rubashkins help build. And a local minister told him none of his parishioners wants AgriProcessors to close. They depend on it for their livelihood. “He said, we certainly want to see the workers treated differently, but the success of the plant is beneficial for all of us in Postville,” Allen reports.

As Allen was leaving, he saw some Chassidic boys playing baseball, their tzitzit flying. He thought about the Guatemalan boy their same age living a few blocks away, who has spent the last year working in the slaughterhouse. “Two different versions of the American dream,” he muses.

Just got this announcement from Agriprocessors’ spokesperson:

As part of the ongoing effort to enhance compliance with immigration and employment law, Agriprocessors has retained Jim Martin and his compliance specialty group, The Prevene Group, as the company’s outside Corporate Compliance Officer. Martin, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, will begin his efforts immediately.

“My job is to ensure the company operates in compliance with all applicable laws,” Martin said. “Agriprocessors’ 800 jobs are important to Postville and northern Iowa, along with the observant Jewish community across the country that relies on them for their kosher meat and poultry. Agriprocessors can meet the needs of those who depend on the company and operate in compliance with all laws, and I intend to see that happen.”

After spending more than 20 years with the United States Attorney’s Office, Mr. Martin has spent the past several years helping companies strengthen and enhance their compliance programs. He was recently recognized in Best Lawyers in America for corporate governance and compliance law.

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That’s what many Jewish Shabbos tables will be serving this week if the reports we’re hearing about the kosher meat supply turn out to be true. But first …

Late yesterday we heard that a bunch of Jewish bigs had signed on to the Uri L’tzedek petition, which vows a boycott June 15 if Agriprocessors doesn’t commit to establishing an externally transparent department to ensure compliance with American and Jewish legal requirements concerning treatment of workers. A spokesman for UL confirmed they are in discussions with the company.

We also got a statement today, issued through the company’s PR guy, announcing that Agriprocessors would be hiring a chief compliance officer. I emailed back asking for more details about the search for a new CEO, which were supposed to be announced last week. I got this reply:

Agriprocessors has begun the process of changing the current management team and adding a Chief Executive Officer by identifying potential candidates with backgrounds necessary for this new position. We will continue to move quickly and deliberately to make this important addition to the company. In the meantime, we are moving rapidly to increase our production capacity each day so we can continue to provide our customers with the quality products they expect from Agriprocessors.

Speaking of production capacity, contrary to assurances we are getting from company spokespeople, the supply of kosher meat is beginning to be affected. Several butchers told us they were able to find other meat suppliers after Agriprocessors was unable to fill orders. But at least one kosher caterer in Florida told JTA she was running from store to store trying to find supplies, and that if Rubashkin shuts down, it will destroy her business since there are no alternatives in her area. JTA’s Sue Fishkoff will have more on this later in the week.

And finally, a piece of news we neglected to note earlier. Agriprocessors has been placing ads for new workers in a Guatemalan newspaper – NOT newspapers for the Guatemalan community in the United States, but newspapers in Guatamela. There’s a PDF of the ad over at FailedMessiah.

After my frustrating experience with Sholom Rubashkin in Postville, I thought it unlikely that I’d have much more luck with his father Aaron. The elder Rubashkin still runs the original family butcher shop on 14th Avenue in the Brooklyn neighborhood Borough Park. Rubashkin opened the shop in 1953, the same year he emigrated from Russia, and the shop looks not to have changed much since. In the space above the door where the sign should be there are only reddish panels, one of which is missing. In the upper right corner of the front window is a square yellow sign: Rubashkin’s.

Sholom had been friendly in our meeting and only disappointed me later, when he reneged on an offer to take me on a tour of the plant. With Aaron the situation was entirely reversed. His underlings in the shop initially ran interference for their boss, saying he was unavailable when I first inquired about speaking to him. About 20 minutes later, Aaron himself wandered in and promptly turned on his heel and disappeared when I identified myself as a reporter. When I approached him again 20 minutes later, he told me he was too busy — “It’s erev Shabbos!” — and to come back Monday, to which I agreed.

But as I interviewed a gaggle of his customers in front of the store last Friday, Aaron appeared and spoke on the record for about 10 minutes. He wandered off, but then returned about 20 minutes later and went on for close to an hour. And when I returned Tuesday to snap a photo, he seemed positively thrilled to see me, greeting me warmly and happily posing for several shots.

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Couple of interesting developments on the Agriprocessors front today.

First, my interview with Aaron Rubashkin went live on the site this afternoon, the first response from any Agriprocessors’ official since this story first broke May 12. I’ll have more on that interview tomorrow.

Second, we learned about the launch of Postville Voices, a new blog that appears very sympathetic to Agriprocessors. The blog was apparently launched last week, and much of it concerns the supposedly impoverished quality of the reporting on the raid and its aftermath. There is one bright spot, however.

And finally, the Rabbinical Council of America issued a statement on the Agriprocessors situation, the first official statement from an Orthodox body since the May 12 raid. There’s a number of interesting aspects to the document, notably the veiled swipes at the Conservative movement’s Hekhsher Tzedek initiative, as well as the Jewish and labor groups that have been consistent critics of the company. The full statement follows.

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That’s what the Jewish Star is claiming:

It is at the insistence of the Orthodox Union that Sholom Rubashkin is to be replaced as chief executive officer of Agriprocessors, the kosher meatpacking giant his father, Aaron Rubashkin, founded, The Jewish Starhas learned.

“We have said that if there were criminal culpability that we would withdraw our supervision,” said Rabbinic Administrator Rabbi Menachem Genack in an interview Tuesday. “The OU spoke to the company to say that we would suggest –– for lots of reasons –– that they should look for professional management.”

It’s not entirely clear from the quote whether Genack himself is taking credit for ousting Sholom, or whether that’s the Jewish Star’s assertion. But the real question is whether Sholom Rubashkin is still “having a great time.”

Late last week, Agriprocessors’ owner Aaron Rubashkin announced that he would be replacing his son Sholom as company CEO. This was not totally unexpected. A source close to the family told me he had recommended turning the plant over to professional management and that Aaron had seemed open to the idea. But during my five days in Postville last week, Sholom was still very much in charge and the one person I was eager to interview above all others.

I made a request with his spokesperson, and dropped by the plant asking to see him, but to no avail. So on Tuesday afternoon, I drove out to the Rubashkin homestead. Sholom’s house is perched quite literally at the edge of town. The family backyard looks out on — what else? — a cornfield. In any American suburb, it would be considered a modest abode, but it’s nearly luxurious by Postville standards. A Hasidic boy who looked to be about 18 answered the door and over his shoulder, in the foyer, was an enormous portrait of the Lubavitcher rebbe. “Ahh a reporter,” he said when I identified myself, his lips curled into the barest smirk.

He asked for a business card, and as I fussed in my pockets for one, Sholom’s wife appeared, holding a telephone to her ear. She was talking to Sholom who was — where else? — at the plant. “He looks like a very nice boy,” she told him as she gave me the once over. “He even put on a yarmulke.”

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