WHO’S KIDDING?

In this week’s Kosher Today newsletter, an article about the aftermath of the Federal raid at AgriProcessors claims that there has been no significant drop in sales by the company. Quoting an anonymous source, the article said, “Retailers say that they do not expect the Agri raid to have an impact on the rapidly growing kosher market. ‘So long as Agri continues to provide a good product at a decent price, they’ll do well,’ said one Chicago retailer…”

Ok, let’s look at that last statement.

A good product at a decent price?????? What does that person consider a not decent price? Rib steaks are over $12 per pound here in the Metro NYC area. Is that supposed to be a decent price? Or is it just a decent price because one company controls 65% of the kosher market and thus can set prices as high as they want?

Aside from that, however, have you ever seen or bought Rubashkin’s pre packaged meat that is sold in super markets? It would appear that a blind person cuts the meat. Or perhaps someone who has never held a knife before. At the very least, it looks like no other similarly named pieces of meat. You know that if you ask for a certain cut of meat, it will pretty much look the same in any kosher butcher store in the USA. Rubashkin meat generally looks like it was hacked and mauled.

We find their meat to be not very good in general. In fact, we almost always ask the butcher to tell us which meat is not Rubashkin. It was not so long ago that a huge percentage of kosher beef was all prime, or maybe one grade below prime. Now there would appear to be no meat that even comes close to prime. To pay those outrageous prices for hacked up meat is more than we can take.