By Reuvain Borchardt

 

 

 

 

Soaring beef prices and a shrinking domestic cattle herd are hitting the kosher beef market hard, and consumers can expect to face shortages going into the Yom Tov season.

 

That’s according to Lakewood butcher R’ Aharon Boruch Epstein, who spoke with The Voice during his time off in the Nine Days.

 

Epstein said his supplier just informed him that Solomon’s beef prices are going up by 10 percent. That’s on top of a 25-percent hike during the past year and a half.

 

He said his other major brand, Alle, has not yet said that they’ll be raising prices, but he expects them too as well—on top of the 8 percent it has gone up over the past year.

 

“There’s no American meat out there,” Epstein said. “There’s no cattle. This is going to be the worst Yom Tov season for meat. People have to wake up early and have patience to get piece by piece, because there’s not going to be much American meat available.”

 

He said one of Meal Mart’s largest slaughterhouses, which shechts 500 cows a day in Aurora, Illinois, has closed for renovations. The closure was done particularly at this time due to the difficult beef market.

 

The high price of beef, he says, means that the treif companies are buying less as well. So the kosher slaughterers can’t find enough treif companies to purchase the (non-kosher) hindquarters from them.

 

“Meal Mart right now is losing money on every shechitah,” Epstein says, because they have to pay a premium on every cow slaughtered to cover the cost of the hindquarters, which they can’t sell.

 

“And that’s why Solomon’s is going up 10 percent—they have so much treif they can’t do anything with.”

 

While one might expect that rising cattle prices would incentivize breeders to raise more cattle, Epstein says that in fact the opposite is true: When beef prices go up, cattle breeders are content with making the same income for less work and raising fewer cows.

 

Add it all up, and the kosher consumer looking forward to a nice summer barbecuing season or having large family gatherings with plenty of good American beef could be in for a disappointment.

 

“If someone wants five French roasts, he’s only getting two this week, one next week, and two the following week,” Epstein says. “I’m only getting 25 French roasts a week when I used to get a hundred. I’m getting one-quarter of my usual supply of American meat.”

 

If you’re willing to go for imported beef, he says there’s plenty of cheap stuff available, but not high-quality imports.

 

The shortage is being felt by supermarkets across town. “Go into stores now and tell me if you can find a hangar steak or a skirt steak. More than one supermarket manager has come begging me to give him ribs, hangars, skirts.

 

“I’m closed in the Nine Days. People called me saying they’re making siyumim and need cowboy steaks. I told them I’m not open. They said, ‘I was in three stores here in Lakewood. They have nothing.”

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