For the first time in years, Eretz Yisroel has seen a
severe shortage of chicken for months. Some companies have
already depleted their stocks of poultry for sale. Shearis
Yisroel stopped all poultry shechitoh for two weeks at
the beginning of Elul and now supplies are extremely low.
The story began, recalled HaRav Dovid Shub, kashrus
supervisor at Shearis Yisroel, and Rav Shimshon Feder,
supervisor of chicken injection, due to a serious problem in
the juncture of the sinews (tzomess hagiddim). Many
chickens became treif as a result, but at first the
problem only affected certain coops rather than the entire
farms.
The problem continued for months at farms around the country,
leading to reduced poultry sales before the chagim.
When the problem ended after the chagim, suddenly
another treifos problem emerged. At first the source
of the problem was not identified. Glatt birds were not to be
found at the farms for a whole week, and after another week
had gone by the search for the origin of the problem got
underway. Eventually it was discovered bronchitis had broken
out among the chickens at most of the chicken farms in both
the North and the South.
One farm contaminated the next and at many farms where 100
percent of the birds had once come out glatt numerous
treif birds were found and the number of glatt
birds gradually declined.
The main problem is that there is no vaccination for avian
bronchitis. Sometimes the illness passes by itself, but since
the disease is contagious, the problem spread, going from bad
to worse.
Unlike many other shechitoh organizations that grade
birds either glatt or treif, Shearis Yisroel has three
different grades of poultry kashrus: glatt, kosher and
treif. This policy makes Shearis Yisroel more likely
to downgrade birds from glatt to kosher.
"In shechitoh lemehadrin," says HaRav Shub, "the birds
must have the lungs and tzomess hagiddim checked
carefully. In order to supply the quantity needed, we inspect
somewhere between two-and-a-half and three million chicks
every month. The process goes like this: Not all of the birds
enter at the beginning of the month, but rather every two
days a new coop is filled to ensure there are birds to
shecht every day. As the bird reaches the age for
marketing, which is between 35 and 45 days old, the
mashgiach goes out to the coop to check the birds. If
he finds everything is fine the coop is designated a glatt
coop. With something like three million birds there was an
abundance of [poultry], be'ezras Hashem.
"But from the beginning of Elul there were problems. Farms
were disqualified one after another. Following examinations
conducted after the chagim it was found the chicks had
a lung disease. In recent weeks it has become a nationwide
[epidemic] and Shearis Yisroel has not shechted
chickens for the past two weeks. I don't recall a case like
this throughout my six years in the industry. There are
certain shochtim who are turning out a very low
percentage of glatt [chickens] and others who are not
shechting at all."
Under the current circumstances when the mashgichim
conduct sample checks to assess the percent of glatt birds in
the coop they receive very poor results. As a result, buying
the birds is not worthwhile for companies, which in turn
creates a poultry shortage.
Buying a few chicken coops is not in the company's commercial
interest when only 50 percent of the birds are glatt, even if
the rest are kosher, since the kosher birds will not command
the full price because the chicken that arrives is cut into
pieces due to the glatt inspections and thus inferior to the
other kosher birds.
