Ningtifir
May the coming year be filled
with health, happiness and prosperity
for all our family and friends.
Dr. Jeffrey and Laurie Fischgrund
Michelle, Marcy, Mark
Andrew and Melanie
L'Shanah Tovah!
May the coming year be filled
with health, happiness and prosperity
for all our family and friends.
The Pierces
Arlene & Douglas
The Fraibergs
Karen, Matt, Ashley, Michael & Ryan
The Herrons
Linda, Scott, Alexa & Lucas
as&na
May the coming year be filled with
health and happiness for all our family and friends.
L'Shanah Tovah!
Kaufman Family
Karen & Jerry, Lisa & Emma,
Brian, Sabrina, Jadyn, Kendyl & Reese
JIM
48
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September 22 • 2011
4
a
Inside Empire
The life of a kosher chicken
from birth to table.
Uriel Heilman
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Mifflintown, Pa.
T
he end came swiftly for the
chicken I'll call Bob.
Propelled into a trough of
sorts by a machine that tips a crate's
worth of birds onto the assembly line —
"They're like children, sliding down;' the
head kosher supervisor said — chicken
Bob was seized by a worker's practiced
hands and guided toward the shochet, or
ritual slaughterer, along a stainless steel
panel meant for calming the birds.
While a second worker held down
his legs and body, the shochet gently
grasped Bob's head and, in what seemed
like a split second, made his cut before
the lifeless chicken was deposited into a
funnel for the blood to drip out.
Every six seconds or so, another
chicken followed.
The shochet, clad in a bloodstained
yellow rain slicker and with a trans-
parent plastic cap covering his hair
and beard, swayed rhythmically as he
worked, almost as if he were davening.
Alongside him, 11 other teams of three,
each led by its own shochet, labored
methodically.
In all, 60,000 chickens would be killed
by late afternoon. It's all in a day's work
at Empire Kosher Poultry, the largest
kosher chicken company in the United
States.
Empire churns out 240,000 chickens
and 27,000 turkeys a week, from quar-
tered broilers to turkey salami. With a
staff of 750, a fleet of two dozen trucks
and a vertically integrated operation
in central Pennsylvania where hatcher-
ies, feed mills, farms and processing all
come together, Empire says it produces
a healthier, cleaner, more reliably kosher
chicken than available anywhere else in
America — and in a socially and envi-
ronmentally responsible way.
To back up its claims, Empire agreed
to give JTA a first-ever camera tour of
its facilities, providing unfettered access
to everything from the kill room to the
farms to the assembly line where chick-
ens and turkey are sliced, processed and
packaged into all manner of raw poultry,
nuggets, cold cuts and hot dogs. The
only restriction was that JTA was not
permitted to photograph the kill room
or certain proprietary methods.
The recent tour had two osten-
sible purposes. One was to draw an
implicit contrast with other kosher
food companies in the news. While
managers declined to get specific, the
most infamous industry example is
Agriprocessors, the Iowa-based kosher
meat giant that was felled in 2008 amid
a host of financial crimes and labor and
safety violations following years of nega-
tive media reports. Agriprocessors' for-
mer CEO, Sholom Rubashkin, is serving
a 27-year prison sentence for financial
fraud and money laundering. (He has